hlz£ 



LB I 



Advance Sheets from the 

EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 

For March, i8gj 

HENRY HOLT & CO., Publishers 
New York 



"^^A. 



PRELIMINARY REPORT 

OF THE 

COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN 

Appointed hw" the Department of Superintendence 

of the National Educational Association 

at Boston, Mass., February, 189) 

1. On the training of teachers 

Horace S. Tarbell (Chairman), Edward Brooks, Thomas M. Balliet, 
Newton C. Dougherty, and Oscar H. Cooper 

2. On the correlation of studies in elementary education 

William T. Harris (Chairman), James M. Greenwood, C. B. Gilbert, 
L. H, Jones, and William H. Maxwell 

3. On the organization of city school systems 

Andrew S. Draper (Chairman), Edwin P. Seaver, Albert G. Lane, 
Addison B. Poland, and W. B. Powell 



Submitted at Cleveland, O., February ig, 189^ 



) ^>-:^Q 



:f^^ 




Copies of the March issue of the Educational 
Review, containing these reports in full, may 
he obtained at ^^ cents each, by addressing 

EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 

29 W. 23d Street 

New York, N. Y. 



Copyright, 1895, by Hhnry Holt & Co. 



If 

/ 



EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 

MARCH, i8g5 



COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN 

REPORT OF THE SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE TRAINING 
OF TEACHERS 

This report treats of the training of elementary and secondary 
teachers, considering first that training which should precede 
teaching in elementary schools. By elementary schools are 
meant the primary and grammar departments of graded 
schools, and ungraded or rural schools. 5 

That teachers are " born, not made," has been so fully the 
world's thought until the present century that a study of sub- 
jects without any study of principles or methods of teaching 
has been deemed quite sufficient. Modern educational thought 
and modern practice, in all sections where excellent schools are lo 
found, confirm the belief that there is a profound philosophy on 
which educational methods are based, and that careful study of 
this philosophy and its application under expert guidance are 
essential to making fit the man born to teach. 

CONDITIONS FOR PROFESSIONAL TRAINING — AGE AND 

ATTAINMENTS 

It is a widely prevalent doctrine, to which the customs of 15 
our best schools conform, that teachers of elementary schools 
should have a secondary or high-school education, and that 
teachers of high schools should have a collegiate education. 
Your committee believe that these are the minimum acquire- 
ments that can generally be accepted, that the scholarship, cul-20 
ture, and power gained by four years of study in advance of 



2 Educational Review [March 

the pupils are not too much to be rightfully demanded, and 
that as a rule no one ought to become a teacher who has not 
the age and attainments presupposed in the possessor of a high- 
school diploma. There are differences in high schools, it is 
5 true, and a high school diploma is not a fixed standard of 
attainment ; but in these United States it is one of the most 
definite and uniform standards that we possess, and varies less 
than college degrees vary or than elementary schools and local 
standards of culture vary. 

lo It is of course implied in the foregoing remarks that the high 
school from which the candidate comes is known to be a repu- 
table school, and that its diploma is proof of the completion of 
a good four-years' course in a creditable manner. If these con- 
ditions do not exist, careful examination is the only recourse. 

15 If this condition, high-school graduation or proof by exam- 
ination of equivalent scholarship, be accepted, the questions of 
the age and attainment to be reached before entering upon 
professional study and training are already settled. But if a 
more definite statement be desired, then it may be said that 

20 the candidate for admission to a normal or training school 
should be eighteen years of age and should have studied 
English, mathematics, and science to the extent usually pur- 
sued in high schools, should be able to write readily, correctly, 
and methodically upon topics within the teacher's necessary 

25 range of thought and conversation, and should have studied, 
for two or more years, at least one language beside English. 
Skill in music and drawing is desirable, particularly ability to 
sketch readily and effectively. 

TRAINING SCHOOLS 

The training of teachers may be done in normal schools, 
30 normal classes in academies and high schools, and in city train- 
ing schools. To all these the general term " training schools " 
will be applied. Those instructed in these schools will be 
called pupils while engaged in professional study, and pupil- 
teachers or teachers-in-training while in practice-teaching pre- 
35 paratory to graduation. Teachers whose work is to be observed 



1895] Committee of fifteen 3 

by pupil-teachers will be called model-teachers ; teachers in 
charge of pupil-teachers during their practice work will be 
called critic-teachers. In some institutions model-teachers 
and critic-teachers are the same persons. The studies usu- 
ally pursued in academies and high schools will be termed 5 
academic, and those post-academic studies to be pursued be- 
fore or during practice-teaching as a preparation therefor will 
be termed orofessional. 

ACADEMIC STUDIES 

Whether academic studies have any legitimate place in a 
normal or training school is a question much debated. It can- 10 
not be supposed that your committee can settle in a paragraph 
a question upon which many essays have been written, many 
speeches delivered, and over which much controversy has 
been waged. 

If training schools are to be distinguished from other sec- 15 
ondary schools they must do a work not done in other schools. 
So far as they teach common branches of study they are doing 
what other schools are doing, and have small excuse for ex- 
istence ; but it may be granted that methods can practically be 
taught only as to subjects, that the study done in professional 20 
schools may so treat of the subjects of study, not as objects 
to be acquired, but as objects to be presented, that their treat- 
ment shall be wholly professional. 

One who is to teach a subject needs to know it as a whole 
made up of related and subordinate parts, and hence must 25 
study it by a method that will give this knowledge. It is not 
necessary to press the argument that many pupils enter normal 
and training schools with such slight preparation as to require 
instruction in academic subjects. The college with a prepara- 
tory department is, as a rule, an institution of distinctly lower 30 
grade than one without such a department. Academic work 
in normal schools that is of the nature of preparation for 
professional work, lowers the standard and perhaps the useful- 
ness of such a school ; but academic work done as a means of 
illustrating or enforcing professional truth has its place in a 35 



4 Editcational Review [March 

professional school as in effect a part of the professional work. 
Professional study differs widely from academic study. In 
the one, a science is studied in its relation to the studying 
mind ; in the other, in reference to its principles and appHca- 
5 tions. The aim of one kind of study is power to apply ; of the 
other, power to present. The tendency of the one is to bring 
the learner into sympathy with the natural world, of the other 
with the child world. How much broader becomes the teacher 
who takes both the academic and the professional view! He 

lowho learns that he may know and he who learns that he may 
teach are standing in quite different mental attitudes. One 
works for knowledge of subject-matter; the other that his 
knowledge may have due organization, that he may bring to 
consciousness the apperceiving ideas by means of which matter 

15 and method may be suitably conjoined. 

How to study is knowledge indispensable to knowing how 
to teach. The method of teaching can best be illustrated by 
teaching. The attitude of a pupil in a training school must 
be that of a learner whose mental stores are expanding, who 

20 faces the great world of knowledge with the purpose to survey 
a portion of it. If we insist upon a suf^cient preparation for 
admission, the question of what studies to pursue and espe- 
cially the controversy between professional and academic work 
will be mainly settled. 

PROFESSIONAL WORK 

25 Professional training comprises two parts : {ci) The science 
of teaching, and {U) the art of teaching. 

In the science of teacJiing zxo. included: (i) Psychology as 

a basis for principles and methods ; (2) Methodology as a 

guide to instruction ; (3) School economy, which adjusts the 

30 conditions of work; and (4) History of education, which gives 

breadth of view. 

The art of teaching is best gained: (i) by observation of 
good teaching ; (2) by practice-teaching under criticism. 

RELATIVE TIME 

The existence and importance of each of these elements in 



1895] Committee of fifteen 5 

the training of teachers are generally acknowledged. Their 
order and proportionate treatment give rise to differences of 
opinion. Some would omit the practice work entirely, launch- 
ing the young teacher upon independent work directly from 
her pupilage in theory. Others, and much the greater number, 5 
advise some preparation in the form of guided experience be- 
fore the training be considered complete. These vary greatly 
in their estimate of the proportionate time to be given to 
practice during training. The answers to the question, " What 
proportion ? " which your committee has received, range from 10 
one-sixteenth to two-thirds as the proportion of time to be 
given to practice. The greater number, however, advocate a 
division of time about equal between theory and practice. 

The normal schools incline to the smallest proportion for 
practice-teaching, the city training-schools to the largest. It 15 
should be borne in mind, however, that city training-schools 
are a close continuation, usually, of high schools, and that the 
high-school courses give a more uniform and probably a more 
adequate preparation than the students entering normal schools 
have usually had. Their facilities for practice-teaching are much 20 
greater "than normal schools can secure, and for this reason also 
practice is made relatively more important. As to the relative 
merits of city training-schools and normal schools, your com- 
mittee does not desire to express an opinion ; the conditions of 
education demand the existence of both, and both are necessities 25 
of educational advancement. It is important to add, however, 
that in the judgment of your committee not less than half of 
the time spent under training by the apprentice-teacher should 
be given to observation and practice, and that this practice in 
its conditions should be as similar as possible to the work she 30 
will later be required to do independently. 

SCIENCE OF TEACHING — PSYCHOLOGY 

The laws of apperception teach that one is ready to appre- 
hend new truth most readily when he has already established 
a considerable and well-arranged body of ideas thereon. 

Suggestion, observation, and reflection are each most fruit- 35 



6 Educatio7ial Review [March 

ful when a foundation of antecedent knowledge has been pro- 
vided. Hence your committee recommends that early in their 
course of study teachers in training assume as true the well- 
known facts of psychology and the essential principles of 
5 education, and make their later study and practice in the light 
of these principles. These principles thus become the norm 
of educational thought, and their truth 'is continually demon- 
strated by subsequent experience. From this time theory 
and practice should proceed together in mutual aid and 

lo support. 

Most fundamental and important of the professional studies 
which ought to be pursued by one intending to teach is psy- 
chology. This study should be pursued at two periods of the 
training-school course, the beginning and the end, and its 

15 principles should be appealed to daily when not formally 
studied. The method of study should be both deductive and 
inductive. The terminology should be early learned from 
a suitable text-book, and significance given to the terms by 
introspection, observation, and analysis. Power of introspec- 

2otion should be gained, guidance in observation should be 
given, and confirmation of psychological principles should be 
sought on every hand. The habit of thinking analytically and 
psychologically should be formed by every teacher. At the 
close of the course a more profound and more completely 

25 inductive study of physiological psychology should be made. 
In this way, a tendency to investigate should be encouraged or 
created. 

STUDY OF CHILDREN 

Modern educational thought emphasizes the opinion that 
the child, not the subject of study, is the guide to the teacher's 

30 efforts. To know the child is of paramount importance. How 
to know the child must be an important item of instruction to 
the teacher in training. The child must be studied as to his 
physical, mental, and moral condition. Is he in good health ? 
Are his senses of sight and hearing normal, or in what degree 

35 abnormal ? What is his temperament ? Which of his faculties 



1895] Coinmittee of fifteen 7 

seem weak or dormant? Is he eye-minded or ear-minded? 
What are his powers of attention ? What are his Hkes and 
disHkes? How far is his moral nature developed, and what 
are its tendencies? By what tests can the degree of difference 
between bright and dull children be estimated ? 5 

To study effectively and observingly these and similar ques- 
tions respecting children, is a high art. No common-sense 
power of discerning human nature is sufBcient ; though 
common sense and sympathy go a long way in such study. 
Weighing, measuring, elaborate investigation requiring appa- 10 
ratus and laboratory methods, are for experts, not teachers 
in training. Above all, it must ever be remembered that the 
child is to be studied as a personality and not as an object to 
be weighed or analyzed. 

METHODOLOGY 

A part of the work under this head must be a study of the 15 
mental and moral effects of different methods of teaching and 
examination, the relative value of individual and class instruc- 
tion at different periods of school life and in the study of dif- 
ferent branches. The art of questioning is to be studied in its 
foundation principles and by the illustration of the best 20 
examples. Some review of the branches which are to be 
taught may be made, making the teacher's knowledge of them 
ready and distinct as to the relations of the several parts of the 
subject to one another and of the whole to kindred subjects. 
These and many such subjects should be discussed in the class 25 
in pedagogy, investigation should be begun, and the lines on 
which it can be followed should be distinctly laid down. 

The laws of psychology, or the capabilities and methods of 
mind-activity, are themselves the fundamental laws of teach- 
ing, which is the act of exciting normal and profitable mind- 30 
action. Beyond these fundamental laws, the principles of edu- 
cation are to be derived inductively. These inductions when 
brought to test will be found to be rational inferences from 
psychological laws and thus founded upon and explained by 
them. 33 



8 Educatio7ial Review [March 

SCHOOL ECONOMY 

School economy, though a factor of great importance in the 
teacher's training, can be best studied by the teacher of some 
maturity and experience, and is of more value in the equipment 
of secondary than of elementary teachers. Only its outlines 
5 and fundamental principles should be studied in the ordinary 
training-school. 

HISTORY OF EDUCATION 

Breadth of mind consists in the power to view facts and 
opinions from the standpoints of others. It is this truth which 
makes the study of history in a full, appreciative way so influ- 

loential in giving mental breadth. This general advantage the 
history of education has in still larger degree, because our in- 
terest in the views and experiences of those engaged like us in 
training the young, enables us to enter more fully into their 
thoughts and purposes than we could into those of the warrior 

15 or ruler. From the efforts of the man we imagine his surround- 
ings, which we contrast with our own. To the abstract element 
of theoretical truth is added the warm human interest we feel 
in the hero, the generous partisan of truth. The history of 
education is particularly full of examples of noble purpose, ad- 

2ovanced thought, and moral heroism. It is inspiring to fill our 
minds with these human ideals. We read in the success of the 
unpractical Pestalozzi ■ the award made to self-sacrifice, sym- 
pathy, and enthusiasm expended in giving application to a vital 
truth. 

25 But with enthusiasm for ideals history gives us caution, 
warns us against the moving of the pendulum, and gives us 
points of departure from which to measure progress. It gives 
us courage to attack difificult problems. It shows which the 
abiding problems are — those that can be solved only by wait- 

3oing, and not tossed aside by a supreme effort. It shows us the 
progress of the race, the changing ideals of the perfect man, 
and the means by which men have sought to realize these 
ideals. We can from its study better answer the question. 
What is education, what may it accomplish, and how may its 



1S95] Committee of fifteen 9 

ideals be realized ? It gives the evolution of the present and 
explains anomalies in our work. And yet the history of edu- 
cation is not a subject to be treated extensively in a training 
school. All but the outlines may better be reserved for later 
professional reading. 5 

TRAINING IN TEACHING 

Training to teach requires (i) schools for observation, and 
(2) schools for practice. 

Of necessity, these schools must be separate in purpose and 
in organization. A practice school cannot be a model school. 
The pupil-teachers should have the opportunity to observe the 10 
best models of the teaching art ; and the manner, methods, and 
devices of the model-teacher should be noted, discussed, and 
referred to the foundation principles on which they rest. 
Allowable modifications of this observed work may be sug- 
gested by the pupil-teacher and approved by the teacher in 15 
charge. 

There should be selected certain of the best teachers in reg- 
ular school work whom the pupil-teachers may \ e sent to 
observe. The pupil-teachers should take no part in the school 
work nor cause any change therein. They should, however, 20 
be told in advance by the teacher what purpose she seeks to 
accomplish. This excites expectation and brings into con- 
sciousness the apperceiving ideas by which the suggestions of 
the exercise, as they develop, may be seized and assimilated. 

At first these visits should be made in company with their 25 
teacher of methods, and the work of a single class in one sub- 
ject should be first observed. After such visits the teacher of 
methods in the given subject should discuss with the pupil- 
teachers the work observed. The pupil-teachers should first 
describe the work they have seen and specify the excellences 30 
noted, and tell why these things are commendable and upon 
what laws of teaching they are based. Next the pupil-teachers 
should question the teacher of methods as to the cause, pur- 
pose, or influence of things noted, and matters of doubtful 
propriety — if there be such — should be considered. Then 35 



lo Educational Review [March 

the teacher in turn should question her pupil-teachers as to 
matters that seem to have escaped their notice, as to the 
motive of the model-teacher, as to the reason for the order of 
treatment, or form of question, wherein lay the merit of her 
5 method, the secret of her power. When pupil-teachers have 
made such observations several times, with several teachers and 
in several subjects, the broader investigation maybe made as to 
the organization of one of the model rooms, its daily programme 
of recitations and of study, the methods of discipline, the rela- 

lotions between pupils and teacher, the "school spirit," the 
school movements, and class progress. This work should be 
done before teaching groups or classes of pupils is attempted, 
and should form an occasional exercise during the period of 
practice-teaching as a matter of relief and inspiration. If an 

15 artist requires the suggestive help of a good example that stirs 
his own originality, why should not a teacher ? 

THE PRACTICE-SCHOOL 

During the course in methodology certain steps closely pre- 
paratory to practice-teaching may be taken, i. The pupil- 
teacher may analyze the topic to be taught, noting essentials 

20 and incidentals, seeking the connections of the subject with 
the mental possessions of the pupils to be considered and the 
sequences from these points of contact to the knowledge to be 
gained under instruction. 2. Next, plans of lessons may be 
prepared and series of questions for teaching the given sub- 

25Ject. 3. Giving lessons to fellow pupil-teachers leads to 
familiarity with the mechanism of class work, such as calling, 
directing, and dismissing classes, gives the beginner ease and 
self-confidence, leads to careful preparation of lessons, gives 
skill in asking questions and in the use of apparatus. 

30 The practice-teaching should be in another school, prefera- 
bly in a different building, and should commence with group- 
teaching in a recitation room apart from the schoolroom. 
Actual teaching of small groups of children gives opportunity 
for the study of the child-mind in its efforts at reception and 

35 assimilation of new ideas, and shows the modifications in lesson 



1895] Committee of fifteen 1 1 

plans that must be made to adapt the subject matter to the 
child's tastes and activities. But the independent charge for 
a considerable time of a schoolroom with a full quota of 
pupils, the pupil-teacher and the children being much of the 
time the sole occupants of the room — in short, the realization 5 
of ordinary school conditions, with the opportunity to go for 
advice to a friendly critic, is the most valuable practice ; and 
no practice short of this can be considered of great value 
except as preparation for this chief form of preparatory 
practice. All this work should have its due proportion only, 10 
or evil may result. For example, lesson plans tend to formal- 
ism, to self-conceit, to work in few and narrow lines, to study 
of subjects rather than of pupils ; lessons to fellow-pupils 
make one self-conscious, hinder the growth of enthusiasm in 
work, and are entirely barren if carried beyond a very few 15 
exercises; teaching groups of children for considerable time 
unfits the teacher for the double burden of discipline and 
instruction, to bear both of which simultaneously and easily is 
the teacher's greatest difificulty and most essential power. 

A critic-teacher should be appointed to the oversight of 20 
two such pupil-teachers, each in charge of a schoolroom. The 
critic may also supervise one or more teachers practicing for 
brief periods daily with groups of children. 

The pupil-teachers are now to emphasize practice rather 
than theory, to work under the direction of one who regards 25 
the interests of the children quite as much as those of the 
teacher-in-training. The critic must admit the principles of 
education and general methods taught by the teacher of 
methodology, but she may have her own devices and even 
special methods that need not be those of the teacher of 30 
methodology. No harm will come to the teachers-in-training 
if they learn that principles must be assented to by all, but 
that methods may bear the stamp of the personahty of the 
teacher ; that all things must be considered from the point of 
view of their effect upon the pupils; the critic maintaining the 35 
claims of the children, the teacher of methods conforming to 
the laws of mind and the science of the subjects taught. The 



12 Educational Review [March 

critics must teach for their pupil-teachers and show in action 
the justness of their suggestions. In this sense they are model- 
teachers as well as critics. 

The critic should at the close of school meet her pupil- 
5 teachers for a report of their experiences through the day : 
What they have attempted, how they have tried to do it, why 
they did so, and what success they gained. Advice as to 
overcoming difficulties, encouragement under trial, caution if 
need be, help for the work of to-morrow, occupy the hour, 
lo Above all, the critic should be a true friend, a womanly 
and cultivated woman, and an inspiring companion, whose 
presence is helpful to work and improving to personality. 

LENGTH OF TRAINING-SCHOOL COURSE 

There are three elements which determine the time to be 
spent in a training school — the time given to academic studies, 

15 the time given to professional studies, and the time given to 
practice. The sum of these periods will be the time required 
for the training course. Taking these in the inverse order, let 
us consider how much time is required for practice work with 
pupils. The time given to lesson outlines and practice \vith 

20 fellow pupil-teachers may be considered a part of the profes- 
sional study rather than of practice-teaching. The period of 
practice with pupils must not be too short, whether we con- 
sider the interests of the pupils or of the teachers-in-training. 
An effort is usually made to counteract the effect upon the 

25 children of a succession of crude efforts of teachers beginning 
practice by strengthening the teaching and supervision through 
the employment of a considerable number of model and super- 
visory teachers, and by dividing the pupils into small groups 
so that much individual work can be done. These arrange- 

30 ments, while useful for their purpose, destroy to a considerable 
degree the usual conditions under which school work is to be 
done and tend to render the teachers-in-training formal and 
imitative. 

The practice room should be, as far as may be, the ordinary 

35 school, with the difficulties and responsibilities that will be met 



1S95] Committee of fifteen 13 

later. The responsibility for order, discipline, progress, records, 
reports, communication with parents and school authorities, 
must fall fully upon the young teacher, who has a friendly as- 
sistant to whom she can go for advice in the person of a wise 
and experienced critic, not constantly at hand, but constantly 5 
within reach. 

Between the critic and the teacher-in-training there should 
exist the most cordial and familiar relations. These relations 
are based on the one hand upon an appreciation of wisdom and 
kindness, on the other, upon an appreciation of sincerity and 10 
effort. The growth of such relations, and the fruitage which 
follows their growth, require time. A half-year is not too 
long to be allotted for them. During this half-year experience, 
self-confidence and growth in power have been gained ; but the 
pupil-teacher is still not ready to be set aside to work out her 15 
own destiny. At this point she is just ready for marked ad- 
vance, which should be helped and guided. To remain longer 
with her critic friend may cause imitation rather than inde- 
pendence, may lead to contentment and cessation of growth. 
She should now be transferred to the care of a second critic of 20 
a different personality, but of equal merit. The new critic is 
bound by her duty and her ambition to see that the first half 
year's advancement is maintained in the second. The pupil- 
teacher finds that excellence is not all upon one model. The 
value of individuality impresses her. She gains a view of solid 25 
principles wrapped in diverse characteristics. Her own indi- 
viduality rises to new importance, and the elements of a 
growth not at once to be checked start up within her. For 
the care of the second critic a second half year must be allowed, 
which extends the practice work with pupils through an entire 30 
school year. For the theoretical work a year is by general 
experience proven sufficient. The ideal training course is, 
then, one of two years' length. 

Provision for the extended practice which is here recom- 
mended can be made only by city training-schools and by 35 
normal schools having connection with the schools of a city. 
To set apart a building of several rooms as a school of practice 



14 Educational Review [March 

will answer the purpose only when there are very few teachers 
in training. In order to give each pupil-teacher a year of 
practice the number of practice rooms must equal the number 
of teachers to be graduated annually from the training school, 
5 be the number ten, or fifty, or live hundred. In any con- 
siderable city a school for practice will not suffice ; many 
schools for practice must be secured. This can be done by 
selecting one excellent teacher in each of a sufficient number 
of school buildings, and making her a critic-teacher, giving her 

lo charge of two schoolrooms, in each of which is placed a pupil- 
teacher for training. 

This insures that the teaching shall be done as nearly as 
may be under ordinary conditions, brings the pupil-teachers at 
once into the general body of teachers, makes the corps of 

15 critics a leaven of zeal, and good teaching scattered among 
the schools. This body of critics will uplift the schools. 
More capable in the beginning than the average teacher, led 
to professional study, ambitious for the best things, they make 
greater progress than they otherwise would do, and are suffi- 

2ocient in themselves to inspire the general body of teachers. 
For the sake of the pupil-teachers, and the children, too, this 
plan is best. Its economy also will readily be apparent. This 
plan has been tried for several years in the schools of Provi- 
dence, with results fully equal to those herein claimed. 

TESTS OF SUCCESS 

25 The tests of success in practice-teaching are in the main 
those to be applied to all teaching. Do her pupils grow more 
honest, industrious, polite? Do they admire their teacher? 
Does she secure obedience and industry only while demanding 
it, or has she influence that reaches beyond her presence ? Do 

30 her pupils think well and talk well? As to the teacher her- 
self : Has she sympathy and tact, self-reliance and originality, 
breadth and intensity? Is she systematic, direct, and business- 
like ? Is she courteous, neat in person and in work ? Has she 
discernment of character and a just standard of requirement 

35 and attainment ? 



1895] Committee of fifteen 15 

These are some of the questions one must answer before he 
pronounces any teacher a success or a failure. 

Admission to a training school assumes that the pupil has 
good health, good scholarship, good sense, good ability, and 
devotion to the work of teaching. If all these continue to be 5 
exhibited in satisfactory degree and the pupil goes through the 
prescribed course of study and practice, the diploma of the 
school should naturally mark the completion of this work. If 
it appears on acquaintance that a serious mistake has been 
made in estimating any of these elements, then, so soon as the 10 
mistake is fairly apparent and is probably a permanent condi- 
tion, the pupil should be requested to withdraw from the work. 
This is not a case where the wheat and the tares should grow 
together until the harvest at graduation day or the examination 
preceding it. With such a foundation continually maintained, 15 
it is the duty of the school to conquer success for each pupil. 

Teaching does not require genius. Indeed genius, in the 
sense of erratic ability, is out of place in the teacher's chair. 
Most good teachers at this close of the nineteenth century are 
made, not born ; made from good material well fashioned. 20 
There is, however, a possibility that some idiosyncrasy of char- 
acter, not readily discovered until the test is made, may rise 
between the prospective teacher and her pupils, making her 
influence over them small or harmful. Such a defect, if it 
exist, will appear during the practice-teaching, and the critic 25 
will discover it. This defect, on its first discovery, should be 
plainly pointed out to the teacher-in-training and her efforts 
should be joined with those of the critic in its removal. 

If this effort be a failure and the defect be one likely to 
harm the pupils hereafter to be taught, then the teacher-in- 30 
training should be informed and requested to withdraw from 
the school. There should be no test at the close of the school 
course to determine fitness for graduation. Graduation should 
.find the teacher serious in view of her responsibilities, hopeful 
because she has learned how success is to be attained, inspired 35 
with the belief that growth in herself and in her pupils is the 
'great demand and the great reward. 



1 6 Educational Review [March 

TRAINING OF TEACHERS FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS 

Perhaps one-sixth of the great body of public school 

teachers in the United States are engaged in secondary work 

and in supervision. These are the leading teachers. They 

give educational tone to communities, as well as inspiration to 

5 the body of teachers. 

It is of great importance that they be imbued with the pro- 
fessional spirit springing from sound professional culture. The 
very difficult and responsible positions that they fill demand 
ripe scholarship, more than ordinary ability, and an intimate 
acknowledge of the period of adolescence, which Rousseau so 
aptly styles the second birth. 

The elementary schools provide for the education of the 
masses. Our secondary schools educate our social and busi- 
ness leaders. The careers of our college graduates who mainly 
15 fill the important places in professional and political life are 
determined largely by the years of secondary training. The 
college or university gives expansion and finish, the secondary 
school gives character and direction. 

It should not be forgotten that the superintendents of public 

20 schools are largely taken from the ranks of secondary teachers, 

and that the scholarship, qualities, and training required for 

the one class are nearly equivalent to that demanded for the 

other. 

Our high schools, too, are the source of supply for teachers 
25 in elementary schools. Hence the pedagogic influences ex- 
erted in the high school should lead to excellence in elemen- 
tary teaching. 

The superintendent who with long foresight looks to the 
improvement of his schools will labor earnestly to improve 
30 and especially to professionalize the teaching in his high 
school. The management which makes the high school an 
independent portion of the school system, merely attached 
and loftily superior, which limits the supervision and influence 
of the superintendent to the primary and grammar grades, is 
35 short-sighted and destructive. 



1895] Committee of fifteen 17 

There ought also to be a place and a plan for the training 
of teachers for normal schools. The great body of normal 
and training schools in the United States are secondary- 
schools. Those who are to teach in these schools need broad 
scholarship, thorough understanding of educational problems, 5 
and trained experience. To put into these schools teachers 
whose scholarship is that of the secondary school and whose 
training is that of the elementary is to narrow and depress 
rather than broaden and elevate. 

If college graduates are put directly into teaching without 10 
special study and training, they will teach as they have been 
taught. The methods of college professors are not in all 
cases the best, and, if they were, high school pupils are not to 
be taught nor disciplined as college students are. High school 
teaching and discipline can be that neither of the grammar 15 
school nor of the college, but is sui generis. To recognize this 
truth and the special differences is vital to success. This 
recognition comes only from much experience at great loss 
and partial failure, or by happy intuition not usually to be 
expected, or by definite instruction and directed practice. 20 
Success in teaching depends upon conformity to principles, 
and these principles are not a part of the mental equipment of 
every educated person. 

These considerations and others are the occasion of a grow- 
ing conviction, widespread in this land, that secondary teachers 25 
should be trained for their work even more carefully than ele- 
mentary teachers are trained. This conviction is manifested 
in the efforts to secure normal schools adapted to training 
teachers for secondary schools, notably in Massachusetts and 
New York, and in the numerous professorships of pedagogy 30 
established in rapidly increasing numbers in our colleges and 
universities. 

The training of teachers for secondary schools is in several 
essential respects the same as that for teachers of elementary 
schools. Both demand scholarship, theory, and practice. The 35 
degree of scholarship required for secondary teachers is by 
common consent fixed at a colleeiate education. No one — 



1 8 Educational Review [March 

with rare exceptions — should be employed to teach in a high 
school who has not this fundamental preparation. 

It is not necessary to enter in detail into the work of theo- 
retical instruction for secondary teachers. The able men at the 
5 head of institutions and departments designed for such work 
neither need nor desire advice upon this matter. And yet for 
the purposes of this report it may be allowable to point out a 
plan for the organization of a secondary training school. 

Let it be supposed that two essentials have been found in 
10 one locality, (i) a college., or university having a department of 
pedagogy and a department of post-graduate work ; (2) a high 
school, academy, or preparatory school whose managers are 
willing to employ and pay a number of graduate students to 
teach under direction for a portion of each day. These two 
15 conditions being met, we will suppose that pedagogy is offered 
as an elective to the college seniors. 

Two years of instruction in the science and art of teaching 
are to be provided ; one, mostly theory with some practice, 
elective during the senior year ; the other, mostly practice with 
20 some theory, elective for one year as post-graduate work. 

During the senior year is to be studied : 

THE SCIENCE OF TEACHING 

The elements of this science are : 

I. Psychology in its physiological, apperceptive, and experi- 
mental features. The period of adolescence here assumes the 

25 prominence that childhood has in the psychological study pre- 
paratory to teaching in lower schools. This is the period of 
beginnings, the beginning of a more ambitious and generous 
life, a life having the future wrapped up in it ; a transition 
period, of mental storm and stress, in which egoism gives way 

30 to altruism, romance has charm, and the social, moral, and 
religious feelings bud and bloom. To guide youth at this 
formative stage, in which an active fermentation occurs that 
may give wine or vinegar according to conditions, requires a 
deep and sympathetic nature, and that knowledge of the chang- 

35 ing life which supplies guidance wise and adequate. 



1895] Committee of fifteen 19 

II. Methodology : a discussion of the principles of educa- 
tion and of the methods of teaching the studies of the sec- 
ondary schools. 

III. School Economy should be studied in a much wider 
and more thorough way than is required for elementary 5 
teachers. The school systems of Germany, France, England, 
and the leading systems of the United States should also be 
studied. 

IV. History of education, the tracing of modern doctrine 
back to its sources ; those streams of influence now flowing 10 
and those that have disappeared in the sands of the centuries. 

V. The philosophy of education as a division of an all- 
involving philosophy of life and thought in which unity is 
found. 

THE ART OF TEACHING 

This includes observation and practice. The observation 15 
should include the work of different grades and of different 
localities, with minute and searching comparison and reports 
upon special topics. How does excellent primary work differ 
from excellent grammar-grade work? How do the standards 
of excellence differ between grammar grades and high-school 20 
grades ? between high-school and college work ? What are the 
arguments for and against coeducation in secondary schools 
as determined by experience? What are the upper and lower 
limits of secondary education as determined by the nature of 
the pupil's effort ? 25 

In the college class in pedagogy much more than in the 
elementary normal school can the class itself be made to afford 
a means of practice to its members. Quizzes may be con- 
ducted by students upon the chapters of the books read or the 
lectures of the professors. These exercises may have for their 30 
object review, or improved statement, or enlarged inference 
and application, and they afford an ample opportunity to 
cultivate the art of questioning, skill in which is the teacher's 
most essential accomplishment. 

The head of the department of pedagogy will of course 35 



20 Educational Review [March 

present the essential methods of teaching, and the heads of 
other departments may lecture on methods pertaining to their 
subject of study ; or secondary teachers of known success may 
still better present the methods now approved in the several 
5 departments of secondary work. 

POST-GRADUATE YEAR 

To those graduates who have elected pedagogy in their 
senior year may be offered the opportunity of further study in 
this department, with such other post-graduate work as taste 
and opportunity permit. From those selecting advanced 

lowork in pedagogy the board in charge of the affiliated second- 
ary school should elect as many teachers for its school as are 
needed, employing them for two-thirds time at one-half the 
usual pay for teachers without experience. Under the pro- 
fessor of pedagogy of the college, the principal, and the heads 

15 of departments of the school these student-teachers should do 
their work, receiving advice, criticism, and illustration as occa- 
sion requires. The time for which they are employed w^ould 
provide for two hours of class work and about one hour of 
clerical work or study while in charge of a schoolroom. These 

20 student-teachers should be given abundant opportunity for 
the charge of pupils while reciting or studying, at recess and 
dismissals, and should have all the responsibilities of members 
of the faculty of this school. Their work should be inspected 
as frequently as may be by the heads of the departments yi 

25 which they teach, by the principal of the school, and by the 

professor of pedagogy. These appointments would be virtually 

fellowships with an opportunity for most profitable experience. 

In the afternoon of each day these students should at<"end 

to college Avork and especially to instruction from the pro- 

Sofessof in pedagogy, who could meet them occasionally with the 
heads of the departments under whose direction they are 
working. 

On Saturdays a seminary of two hours' duration might be held, 
conducted by the professor of pedagogy and attended by the 

35 student-teachers and the more ambitious teachers of experi- 



1895] Committee of fifteen 21 

ence in the vicinity. These seminaries would doubtless be of 
great profit to both classes of participants and the greater to 
each because of the other. [Such a training school for sec- 
ondary teachers in connection with Brown University and the 
Providence High School is contemplated for the coming year.] 5 

It will not be needful to specify further the advantages to 
the student-teachers. The arrangement likewise affords advan- 
tage to the afifiliated school, especially in the breadth of view 
this work would afford to the heads of departments, the 
intense desire it would beget in them for professional skill, the 10 
number of perplexing problems which it would force them to 
attempt the solution of. 

The visits of the professor of pedagogy, and the constant 
comparison he would make between actual and ideal conditions, 
would lead him to seek the improvement not only of the stu-15 
dents in practice but of the school as a whole. 

When several earnest and capable people unite in a mutual 
effort to improve themselves and their work all the essential 
conditions of progress are present. 

Horace S. Tarbell, Chairman, 20 

Superintendent of Schools, Providence, R. I. 

Edward Brooks, 
Superintendent of Schools, Philadelphia, Pa. 

Thomas M. Balliet, 
Superintendent of Schools, Springfield, Mass. 25 

Newton C. Dougherty, 
Superintendent of Schools, Peoria, 111. 

Oscar H. Cooper, 
Superintendent of Schools, Galveston, Tex. 



II 

COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN 

REPORT OF THE SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE CORRELATION 
OF STUDIES IN ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 

The undersigned Committee agrees upon the following 

report, each member reserving for himself the expression of 

his individual divergence from the opinion of the majority, 

by a statement appended to his signature, enumerating the 

5 points to which exception is taken and the grounds for them. 

I. CORRELATION OF STUDIES 

Your Committee understands by correlation of studies: 
/. Logical order of topics and branches 

First, the arrangement of topics in proper sequence in the 
course of study, in such a manner that each branch develops in 
an order suited to the natural and easy progress of the child, 
loand so that each step is taken at the proper time to help his 
advance to the next step in the same branch, or to the next 
steps in other related branches of the course of study. 

2. Symmetrical zvhole of studies in the zvorld of himan 
learning 

Second, the adjustment of the branches of study in such a 
manner that the whole course at any given time represents all 

15 the great divisions of human learning, as far as is possible at 
the stage of maturity at which the pupil has arrived, and that 
each allied group of studies is represented by some one of 
its branches best adapted for the epoch in question ; it being 
implied that there is an equivalence of studies to a greater or 

20 less degree within each group, and that each branch of human 
learning should be represented by some equivalent study ; so 
that, while no great division is left unrepresented, no group 

22 



Committee of fifteen 23 

shall have superfluous representatives and thereby debar 
other groups from a proper representation. 

J. Psychological symmetry — the whole mind 
Third, the selection and arrangement of the branches and 
topics within each branch considered psychologically with 
a view to afford the best exercise of the faculties of the 5 
mind, and to secure the unfolding of those faculties in their 
natural order, so that no one faculty is so overcultivated 
or so neglected as to produce abnormal or one-sided mental 
development. 

^. Correlation of pupiVs course of study with the world in 
wJiich he lives — his spiritual and natural environment 

Fourth and chiefly, your Committee understands by corre- 10 
lation of studies the selection and arrangement in orderly 
sequence of such objects of study as shall give the child an 
insight into the world that he lives in, and a command over its 
resources such as is obtained by a helpful co-operation with 
one's fellows. In a word, the chief consideration to which all 15 
others are to be subordinated, in the opinion of your Com- 
mittee, is this requirement of the civilization into which the 
child is born, as determining not only what he shall study in 
school, but what habits and customs he shall be taught in the 
family before the school age arrives ; as well as that he shall 20 
acquire a skilled acquaintance with some one of a definite 
series of trades, professions, or vocations in the years that fol- 
low school; and, furthermore, that this question of the relation 
of the pupil to his civilization determines what political duties 
he shall assume and what religious faith or spiritual aspirations 25 
shall be adopted for the conduct of his life. 

To make mor^ clear their reasons for the preference here 
expressed for the objective and practical basis of selection of 
topics for the course of study, rather than the subjective basis 
so long favored by educational writers, your Committee would 30 
describe the psychological basis, already mentioned, as being 
merely formal in its character, relating only to the exercise of 
the so-called mental faculties. 



24 Educational Review ^ [March 

It would furnish a training of spiritual powers analogous to 
the gymnastic training of the muscles of the body. Gym- 
nastics may develop strength and agility without leading to 
any skill in trades or useful employment. So an abstract 
5 psychological training may develop the will, the intellect, the 
imagination, or the memory, but without leading to an exer- 
cise of acquired power in the interests of civilization. The 
game of chess would furnish a good course of study for the 
discipline of the powers of attention and calculation of abstract 

lo combinations, but it would give its possessor little or no 
knowledge of man or nature. The psychological ideal which 
has prevailed to a large extent in education has in the old 
phrenology, and in the recent studies in physiological psy- 
chology, sometimes given place to a biological ideal. Instead 

15 of the view of mind as made up of faculties like will, intel- 
lect, imagination and emotion, conceived to be all necessary 
to the soul if developed in harmony with one another, the 
concept of nerves or brain-tracts is used as the ultimate regu- 
lative principle to determine the selection and arrangement of 

20 studies. Each part of the brain is supposed to have its claim 
on the attention of the educator, and that study is thought to 
be the most valuable which employs normally the larger num- 
ber of brain-tracts. This view reaches an extreme in the 
direction of formal as opposed to objective or practical grounds 

25 for selecting a course of study. While the old psychology with 
its mental faculties concentrated its attention on the mental 
processes and neglected the world of existing objects and rela- 
tions upon which those processes were directed, physiological 
psychology tends to confine its attention to the physical part 

30 of the process, the organic changes in the brain cells and their 
functions. 

Your Committee is of the opinion that psychology of both 
kinds, physiological and introspective, can hold only a sub- 
ordinate place in the settlement of questions relating to the 

35 correlation of studies. The branches to be studied, and the 
extent to which they are studied, will be determined mainly 
by the demands of one's civilization. These will prescribe 



1895] Committee of fifteen 25 

what is most useful to make the individual acquainted with 
physical nature and with human nature so as to fit him as an 
individual to perform his duties in the several institutions — 
family, civil society, the state, and the Church. But next after 
this, psychology will furnish important considerations that 5 
will largely determine the methods of instruction, the order of 
taking up the several topics so as to adapt the school work to 
the growth of the pupil's capacity, and the amount of work so 
as not to overtax his powers by too much or arrest the devel- 
opment of strength by too little. A vast number of subor- 10 
dinate details belonging to the pathology of education, such 
as the hygienic features of school architecture and furniture, 
programmes, the length of study hours and of class exercises, 
recreation, and bodily reactions against mental effort, will be 
finally settled by scientific experiment in the department of 15 
physiological psychology. 

Inasmuch as your Committee is limited to the consideration 
of the correlation of studies in the elementary school, it has 
considered the question of the course of study in general only 
in so far as this has been found necessary in discussing the 20 
grounds for the selection of studies for the period of school 
education occupying the eight years from six to fourteen years, 
or the school period between the kindergarten on the one hand 
and the secondary school on the other. It has not been pos- 
sible to avoid some inquiry into the true distinction between 25 
secondary and elementary studies, since one of the most impor- 
tant questions forced upon the attention of your Committee 
is that of the abridgment of the elementary course of study 
from eight or more years to seven or even six years, and the 
corresponding increase of the time devoted to studies usually 30 
assigned to the high school and supposed to belong to the 
secondary course of study for some intrinsic reason. 

II. THE COURSE OF STUDY — EDUCATIONAL VALUES 

Your Committee would report that it has discussed in de- 
tail the several branches of study that have found a place in 
the curriculum of the elementary school, with a view to dis-35 



26 Educational Review [March 

cover their educational value for developing and training the 
faculties of the mind, and more especially for correlating the 
pupil with his spiritual and natural environment in the world 
in which he lives. 

5 

A. Language studies 

There is first to be noted the prominent place of language 
study that takes the form of reading, penmanship, and 
grammar in the first eight years' work of the school. It is 
claimed for the partiality shown to these studies that it is 
justified by the fact that language is the instrument that makes 

lo possible human social organization. It enables each person to 
communicate his individual experience to his fellows and thus 
permits each to profit by the experience of all. The written 
and printed forms of speech preserve human knowledge and 
make progress in civilization possible. The conclusion is 

15 reached that learning to read and write should be the leading 
study of the pupil in his first four years of school. Reading 
and writing are not so niuch ends in themselves as means for 
the acquirement of all other human learning. This considera- 
tion alone would be sufficient to justify their actual place in 

20 the work of the elementary school. But these branches 
require of the learner a difficult process of analysis. The pupil 
must identify the separate words in the sentence he uses, and 
in the next place must recognize the separate sounds in each 
word. It requires a considerable effort for the child or the 

25 savage to analyze his sentence into its constituent words, and 
a still greater effort to discriminate its elementary sounds. 
Reading, writing, and spelling in their most elementary form, 
therefore, constitute a severe training in mental analysis for 
the child of six to ten years of age. We are told that it is far 

30 more disciplinary to the mind than any species of observation 
of differences among material things, because of the fact that 
the word has a twofold character — addressed to external sense 
as spoken sound to the ear, or as written and printed words 
to the eye — but containing a meaning or sense addressed to 

35 the understanding and only to be seized by introspection. 



1895] Committee of fifteen 27 

The pupil must call up the corresponding idea by thought, 
memory, and imagination, or else the word will cease to "be a 
word and remain only a sound or character. 

On the other hand, observation of things and movements 
does not necessarily involve this twofold act of analysis, intro- 5 
spective and objective, but only the latter — the objective 
analysis. It is granted that we all have frequent occasion to 
condemn poor methods of instruction as teaching words rather 
than things. But we admit that we mean empty sounds or 
characters rather than true words. Our suggestions for the 10 
correct method of teaching amount in this case simply to lay- 
ing stress on the meaning of the word, and to setting the 
teaching process on the road of analysis of content rather than 
form. In the case of words used to store up external observa- 
tion the teacher is told to repeat and make alive again the act 15 
of observation by which the word obtained its original mean- 
ing. In the case of a word expressing a relation between facts 
or events, the pupil is to be taken step by step through the 
process of reflection by which the idea was built up. Since 
the word, spoken and written, is the sole instrument by which 20 
reason can fix, preserve, and communicate both the data of 
sense and the relations discovered between them by reflec- 
tion, no new method in education has been able to supplant in 
the school the branches, reading and penmanship. But the 
real improvements in method have led teachers to lay greater 25 
and greater stress on the internal factor of the word, on its 
meaning, and have in manifold ways shown how to repeat the 
original experiences that gave the meaning to concrete words, 
and the original comparisons and logical deductions by which 
the ideas of relations and causal processes arose in the mind 30 
and required abstract words to preserve and communicate them. 
It has been claimed that it would be better to have first a 
basis of knowledge of things, and secondarily and subsequently 
a knowledge of words. But it has been replied to this, that 
the progress of the child in learning to talk indicates his ascent 35 
out of mere impressions into the possession of true knowledge. 
For he names objects only after he has made some synthesis 



28 Educational Review ■ [March 

of his impressions and has formed general ideas. He recog- 
nizes the same object under different circumstances of time 
and place, and also recognizes other objects belonging to the 
same class by and with names. Hence the use of the word 
5 indicates a higher degree of self-activity — the stage of mere 
impressions without words or signs being a comparatively pas- 
sive state of mind. What we mean by things first and words 
afterward, is therefore not the apprehension of objects by pas- 
sive impressions so much as the active investigation and ex- 

loperimenting which come after words are used and the higher 
forms of analysis are called into being by that invention of rea- 
son known as language, which, as before said, is a synthesis 
of thing and thought, of outward sign and inward signification. 
Rational investigation cannot precede the invention of lan- 

iSguage any more than blacksmithing can precede the invention 
of hammers, anvils, and pincers. For language is the neces- 
sary tool of thought used in the conduct of the analysis and 
synthesis of investigation. 

Your Committee would sum up these considerations by say- 

2oing that language rightfully forms the center of instruction in 
the elementary school, but that progress in methods of teach- 
ing is to be made, as hitherto, chiefly by laying more stress on 
the internal side of the word, its meaning; using better graded 
steps to build up the chain of experience or the train of 

25 thought that the word expresses. 

The first three years' work of the child is occupied mainly 
with the mastery of the printed and written forms of the 
words of his colloquial vocabulary; words that he is already 
familiar enough with as sounds addressed to the ear. He has to 

30 become familiar with the new forms addressed to the eye, and it 
would be an unwise method to require him to learn many new 
words at the same time that he is learning to recognize his old 
words in their new shape. But as soon as he has acquired 
some facility in reading what is printed in the colloquial style, 

35 he may go on to selections from standard authors. The 
literary selections should be graded, and are graded in almost 
all series of readers used in our elementary schools, in such 



1895] Committee of fifteen 29 

a way as to bring those containing the fewest words outside 
of the colloquial vocabulary into the lower books of the series, 
and increasing the difficulties step by step as the pupil grows 
in maturity. The selections are literary works of art possess- 
ing the required organic unity and a proper reflection of this 5 
unity in the details, as good works of art must do. But they 
portray situations of the soul, or scenes of life, or elaborated 
reflections, of which the child can obtain some grasp through 
his capacity to feel and think, although in scope and com- 
pass they far surpass his range. They are adapted therefore to 10 
lead him out of and beyond himself, as spiritual guides. 

Literary style employs, besides words common to the collo- 
quial vocabulary, words used in a semi-technical sense expres- 
sive of fine shades of thought and emotion. The literary work 
of art furnishes a happy expression for some situation of the 15 
soul, or some train of reflection hitherto unutterable in an 
adequate manner. If the pupil learns this literary production, 
he finds himself powerfully helped to understand both himself 
and his fellow-men. The most practical knowledge of all, it 
will be admitted, is a knowledge of human nature — a knowl-20 
edge that enables one to combine with his fellow-men and to 
share with them the physical and spiritual wealth of the race. 
Of this high character as humanizing or civilizing, are the 
favorite works of literature found in the school readers, about 
one hundred and fifty English and American writers being 25 
drawn upon for the material. Such are Shakspere's speeches 
of Brutus and Mark Antony, Hamlet's and Macbeth's solilo- 
quies, Milton's L'Allegro and II Penseroso, Gray's Elegy, 
Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade and Ode on the 
Death of the Duke of Wellington, Byron's Waterloo, Irving's 30 
Rip Van Winkle, Webster's Reply to Hayne, The trial of 
Knapp, and Bunker Hill oration, Scott's Lochinvar, Marmion, 
and Roderick Dhu, Br3^ant's Thanatopsis, Longfellow's Psalm 
of Life, Paul Revere, and The Bridge, O'Hara's Bivouac of 
the Dead, Campbell's Hohenlinden, Collins' How Sleep the 35 
Brave, Wolfe's Burial of Sir John Moore, and other fine prose 
and poetry from Addison, Emerson, Franklin, The Bible, 



2,0 Edtuational Review [March 

Hawthorne, Walter Scott, Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Swift, 
Milton, Cooper, Whittier, Lowell, and the rest. The read- 
ing and study of fine selections in prose and verse furnish the 
chief aesthetic training of the elementary school. But this 
5 should be re-enforced by some study of photographic or other 
reproductions of the world's great masterpieces of architec- 
ture, sculpture, and painting. The frequent sight of these 
reproductions is good ; the attempt to copy or sketch them 
with the pencil is better; best of all is an aesthetic lesson on 

lo their composition, attempting to describe in words the idea of 
the whole that gives the W'Ork its organic unity, and the 
devices adopted by the artist to reflect this idea in the details 
and re-enforce its strength. The aesthetic taste of teacher and 
pupil can be cultivated by such exercises, and once set on the 

15 road of development this taste may improve through life. 

A third phase of language study in the elementary school 
is formal grammar. The works of literary art in the readers, 
re-enforced as they ought to be by supplementary reading at 
home of the whole works from which the selections for the 

20 school readers are made, will educate the child in the use of a 
higher and better English style. Technical grammar never can 
do this. Only familiarity with fine English works will insure 
one a good and correct style. But grammar is the science of 
language, and as the first of the seven liberal arts it has long 

25 held sway in school as the disciplinary study /^r excellence. A 
survey of its educational value, subjective and objective, usually 
produces the conviction that it is to retain the first place in the 
future. Its chief objective advantage is that it shows the 
structure of language, and the logical forms of subject, predi- 

3ocate, and modifier, thus revealing the essential nature of 
thought itself, the most important of all objects because it is 
self-object. On the subjective or psychological side, grammar 
demonstrates its title to the first place by its use as a disci- 
pline in subtle analysis, in logical division and classification, 

35 in the art of questioning, and in the mental accomplishment of 
making exact definitions. Nor is this an empty, formal disci- 
pline, for its subject matter, language, is a product of the 



1895] Committee of fifteen 31 

reason of a people not as individuals but as a social whole, and 
the vocabulary holds in its store of words the generalized 
experience of that people, including sensuous observation and 
reflection, feeling and emotion, instinct and volition. 

No formal labor on a great objective field is ever lost wholly, 5 
since at the very least it has the merit of familiarizing the 
pupil with the contents of some one extensive province that 
borders on his life, and with which he must come into correla- 
tion; but it is easy for any special formal discipline, when con- 
tinued too long, to paralyze or arrest growth at that stage. 15 
The overcultivation of the verbal memory tends to arrest the 
growth of critical attention and reflection. Memory of acces- 
sory details too, so much prized in the school, is also cultivated 
often at the expense of an insight into the organizing principle 
of the whole and the causal nexus that binds the parts. So 10- 
too the study of quantity, if carried to excess, may warp the 
mind into a habit of neglecting quality in its observation and 
reflection. As there is no subsumption in the quantitative 
judgment but only dead equality or inequality (A is equal to or 
greater or less than B), there is a tendency to atrophy in the fac-20 
ulty of concrete syllogistic reasoning on the part of the person 
devoted exclusively to mathematics. For the normal syllogism 
usesjudgments wherein the subject is subsumed under the pred- 
icate (This is a rose — the individual rose is subsumed under 
the class rose; Socrates is a man, etc.). Such reasoning con- 25 
cerns individuals in two aspects, first as concrete wholes and 
secondly as members of higher totalities or classes — species 
and genera. Thus, too, grammar, rich as it is in its contents, 
is only a formal discipline as respects the scientific, historic, or 
literary contents of language, and is indifferent to them. A 30 
training for four or five years in parsing and grammatical anal- 
ysis practiced on literary works of art (Milton, Shakspere, 
Tennyson, Scott) is a training of the pupil into habits of 
indifference toward and neglect of the genius displayed in the 
literary work of art, and into habits of impertinent and trifling 35 
attention to elements employed as material or texture, and a 
corresponding neglect of the structural form which alone is 



2,2 Educational Review [March 

the work of the artist. A parallel to this would be the mason's 
habit of noticing only the brick and mortar, or the stone and 
cement, in his inspection of the architecture, say of Sir Chris- 
topher Wren, A child overtrained to analyze and classify 
5 shades of color — examples of this one finds occasionally in a 
primary school whose specialty is "objective teaching" — might 
in later life visit an art gallery and make an inventory of colors 
without getting even a glimpse of a painting as a work of art. 
Such overstudy and misuse of grammar as one finds in the 

lo elementary school, it is feared, exists to some extent in sec- 
ondary schools and even in colleges, in the work of mastering 
the classic authors. 

Your Committee is unanimous in the conviction that formal 
grammar should not be allowed to usurp the place of a 

15 study of the literary work of art in accordance with literary 
method. The child can be gradually trained to see the 
technical "motives" of a poem or prose work of art and to 
enjoy the aesthetic inventions of the artist. The analysis of a 
work of art should discover the idea that gives it organic unity; 

20 the collision and the complication resulting; the solution and 
denouement. Of course these things must be reached in the 
elementary school without even a mention of their technical 
terms. The subject of the piece is brought out; its reflection 
in the conditions of the time and place to heighten interest by 

25 showing its importance; its second and stronger reflection in 
the several details of its conflict and struggle; its reflection in 
the denouement wherein its struggle ends in victory or defeat 
and theethical or rational interests are vindicated, — and the 
results move outward, returning to the environment again in 

30 ever-widening circles, — something resembling this is to be found 
in every work of art, and there are salient features which can 
be briefly but profitably made subject of comment in familiar 
language with even the youngest pupils. There is an ethical 
and an sesthetical content to each work of art. It is profitable 

.35 to point out both of these in the interest of the child's growing 
insight into human nature. The ethical should, however, be 
kept in subordination to the aesthetical, but for the sake of the 



1895] Committee of fifteen 33 

supreme interests of the ethical itself. Otherwise the study of 
a work of art degenerates into a goody-goody performance, 
and its effects on the child are to cause a reaction against the 
moral. The child protects his inner individuality against 
effacement through external authority by taking an attitude 5 
of rebellion against stories with an appended moral. Herein 
the superiority of the aesthetical in literary art is to be seen. 
For the ethical motive is concealed by the poet, and the hero 
is painted with all his brittle individualism and self-seeking. His 
passions and his selfishness, gilded by fine traits of bravery and 10 
noble manners, interest th^ youth, interest us all. The estab- 
lished social and moral order seems to the ambitious hero to 
be an obstacle to the unfolding of the charms of individuality. 
The deed of violence gets done, and the Nemesis is aroused. 
Now his deed comes back on the individual doer, and our sym- 15 
pathy turns against him and we rejoice in his fall. Thus the 
sesthetical unity contains within it the ethical unity. The 
lesson of the great poet or novelist is taken to heart, whereas 
the ethical announcement by itself might have failed, especially 
with the most self-active and aspiring of the pupils. Aristotle 20 
pointed out in his Poetics this advantage of the aesthetic unity, 
which Plato in his Republic seems to have missed. Tragedy 
purges us of our passions, to use' Aristotle's expression, because 
we identify our own wrong inclinations with those of the hero, 
and by sympathy we suffer with him and see our intended deed 25 
returned upon us with tragic effect, and are thereby cured. 

Your Committee has dwelt upon the aesthetic side of liter- 
ature in this explicit manner because they believe that the 
general tendency in elementary schools is to neglect the 
literary art for the literary formalities which concern the 3° 
mechanical material rather than the spiritual form. Those 
formal studies should not be discontinued, but subordinated to 
the higher study of literature.' 

Your Committee reserves the subject of language lessons, 
composition writing, and what relates to the child's expression 35 
of ideas in writing, for consideration under Part 3 of this 
Report, treating of programme. 



34 Educational Review [March 

B. Arithmetic 

Side by side with language study is the study of mathematics 
in the schools, claiming the second place in importance of all 
studies. It has been pointed out that mathematics concerns 
the laws of time and space — their structural form, so to speak — 
5 and hence that it formulates the logical conditions of all matter 
both in rest and in motion. Be this as it may, the high posi- 
tion of mathematics as the science of all quantity is universally 
acknowledged. The elementary branch of mathematics is arith- 
metic, and this is studied in the primary and grammar schools 

lo from six to eight years, or even longer. The relation of arith- 
metic to the whole field of mathematics has been stated (by 
Comte, Howison, and others) to be that of the final step in a 
process of calculation in which results are stated numerically. 
There are branches that develop or derive quantitative func- 

15 tions : say geometry for spatial forms, and mechanics for move- 
ment and rest and the forces producing them. Other branches 
transform these quantitative functions into such forms as may 
be calculated in actual numbers ; namely, algebra in its common 
or lower form, and in its higher form as the differential and 

20 integral calculus, and the calculus of variations. Arithmetic 
evaluates or finds the numerical value for the functions thus 
deduced and transformed. The educational value of arith- 
metic is thus indicated both as concerns its psychological side 
and its objective practical uses in correlating man with the 

25 world of nature. In this latter respect as furnishing the key 
to the outer world in so far as the objects of the latter are a 
matter of direct enumeration, — capable of being counted, — it is 
the first great step in the conquest of nature. It is the first 
tool of thought that man invents in the work of emancipating 

30 himself from thraldom to external forces. For by the com- 
mand of number he learns to divide and conquer. He can 
proportion one force to another, and concentrate against an 
obstacle precisely what is needed to overcome it. Number also 
makes possible all the other sciences of nature which depend on 

35 exact measurement and exact record of phenomena as to the 



1895] Committee of fifteen 35 

following items: order of succession, date, duration, locality, 
environment, extent of sphere of influence, number of mani- 
festations, number of cases of intermittence. All these can be 
defined accurately only by means of number. The educa- 
tional value of a branch of study that furnishes the indispen- 5 
sable first step toward all science of nature is obvious. But 
psychologically its importance further appears in this, that 
it begins with an important step in analysis; namely, the 
detachment of the idea of quantity from the concrete whole 
which includes quality as well as quantity. To count, one 10 
drops the qualitative and considers only the quantitative 
aspect. So long as the individual differences (which are quali- 
tative in so far as they distinguish one object from another) are 
considered, the objects cannot be counted together. When 
counted, the distinctions are dropped out of sight as indif-15 
ferent. As counting is the fundamental operation of arith- 
metic, and all other arithmetical operations are simply devices 
for speed by using remembered countings instead of going 
through the detailed work again each time, the hint is furnished 
the teacher for the first lessons in arithmetic. This hint 20 
has been generally followed out and the child set at work at 
first upon the counting of objects so much alike that the 
qualitative difference is not suggested to him. He constructs 
gradually his tables of addition, subtraction, and multiplica- 
tion, and fixes them in his memory. Then he takes his next 25 
higher step, namely the apprehension of the fraction. This is 
an expressed ratio of two numbers, and therefore a much more 
complex thought than he has met with in dealing with the 
simple numbers. In thinking five-sixths he first thinks five 
and then six, and holding these two in mind thinks the result 30 
of the first modified by the second. Here are three steps 
instead of one, and the result is not a simple number but an 
inference resting on an unperformed operation. This psycho- 
logical analysis shows the reason for the embarrassment of the 
child on his entrance upon the study of fractions and the other 35 
operations that imply ratio. The teacher finds all his resources 
in the way of method drawn upon to invent steps and half steps, 



2,6 Educational Review [March 

to aid the pupil to make continuous progress here. All these 
devices of method consist in steps by which the pupil 
descends to the simple number and returns to the complex. 
He turns one of the terms into a qualitative unit and thus is 
5 enabled to use the other as a simple number. The pupil takes 
the denominator, for example, and makes clear his conception 
of one-sixth as his qualitative unit, then five-sixths is as clear 
to him as five oxen. But he has to repeat this return from 
ratio to simple numbers in each of the elementary operations — 

10 addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in the 
reduction of fractions — and finds the road long and tedious at 
best. In the case of decimal fractions the psychological process 
is more complex still; for the pupil has given him one of the 
terms,' the numerator, from which he must mentally deduce 

15 the denominator from the position of the decimal point. This 
doubles the work of reading and recognizing the fractional 
number. But it makes addition and subtraction of fractions 
nearly as easy as that of simple numbers and assists also in 
multiplication of fractions. But division of decimals is a 

20 much more complex operation than that of common fractions. 

The want of a psychological analysis of these processes has 

led many good teachers to attempt decimal fractions with 

their pupils before taking up common fractions. In the end 

they have been forced to make introductory steps to aid the 

25 pupil and in these steps to introduce the theory of the com- 
mon fraction. They have by this refuted their own theory. 

Besides {a) simple numbers and the four operations with 
them, {b) fractions common and decimal, there is (r) a third 
step in number, namely the theory of powers and roots. It is 

30 a further step in ratio, namely the relation of a simple number 
to itself as power and root. The mass of material which fills 
the arithmetic used in the elementary school consists of two 
kinds of examples, first, those wherein there is a direct appli- 
cation of simple numbers, fractions, and powers, and secondly 

35 the class of examples involving operations in reaching numer- 
ical solutions through indirect data and consequently involv- 
ing more or less transformation of functions. Of this character 



1 895] Co7nmittee of fifteen 37 

is most of the so-called higher arithmetic and such problems 
in the text-book used in the elementary schools as have, not 
inappropriately, been called (by General Francis A. Walker in 
his criticism on common-school arithmetic) numerical "conun- 
drums." Their difficult}^' is not found in the strictly arith- 5 
metical part of the process of the solution (the third phase 
above described), but rather in the transformation of the quan- 
titative function given into the function that can readily be 
calculated numerically. The transformation of functions 
belongs strictly to algebra. Teachers who love arithmetic, 10 
and who have themselves success in working out the so-called 
numerical conundrums, defend with much earnestness the cur- 
rent practice which uses so much time for arithmetic. They 
see in it a valuable training for ingenuity and logical analysis, 
and believe that the industry which discovers arithmetical 15 
ways of transforming the functions given in such problems 
into plain numerical operations of adding, subtracting, multi- 
plying, or dividing is well bestowed. On the other hand the 
critics of this practice contend that there should be no merely 
formal drill in school for its own sake, and that there should 20 
be, always, a substantial content to be gained. They contend 
that the work of the pupil in transforming quantitative func- 
tions by arithmetical methods is wasted, because the pupil 
needs a more adequate expression than number for this pur- 
pose; that this has been discovered in algebra, which enables 25 
him to perform with ease such quantitative transformations 
as puzzle the pupil in arithmetic. They hold, therefore, 
that arithmetic pure and simple should be abridged and 
elementary algebra introduced after the numerical operations 
in powers, fractions, and simple numbers have been mastered, 30 
together with their applications to the tables of weights and 
measures and to percentage and interest. In the seventh year 
of the elementary course there would be taught equations of 
the first degree and the solution of arithmetical problems that 
fall under proportion or the so-called "rule of three," together 35 
with other problems containing complicated conditions — those 
in partnership for example. In the eighth year quadratic 



38 Educational Review [March 

equations could be learned, and other problems of higher arith- 
metic solved in a more satisfactory manner than by numerical 
methods. It is contended that this earlier introduction of 
algebra, with a sparing use of letters for known quantities, 
5 would secure far more mathematical progress than is obtained 
at present on the part of all pupils, and that it would enable 
many pupils to go on into secondary and higher education 
who are now kept back on the plea of lack of preparation in 
arithmetic, the real difficulty in many cases being a lack of 

10 ability to solve algebraic problems by an inferior method. 

Your Committee would report that the practice of teaching 
two lessons daily in arithmetic, one styled "mental" or "intel- 
lectual" and the other "written" arithmetic (because its exer- 
cises are written out with pencil or pen) is still continued in 

15 many schools. By this device the pupil is made to give twice 
as much time to arithmetic as to any other branch. It is con- 
tended by the opponents of this practice, with some show of 
reason, that two lessons a day in the study of quantity have a 
tendency to give the mind a bent or set in the direction of 

20 thinking quantitatively with a corresponding neglect of the 
power to observe, and to reflect upon, qualitative and causal 
aspects. For mathematics does not take account of causes, 
but only of equality and difference in magnitude. It is fur- 
ther objected that the attempt to secure what is called thor- 

25 oughness in the branches taught in the elementary schools is 
often carried too far; in fact, to such an extent as to produce 
arrested development (a sort of mental paralysis) in the 
mechanical and formal stages of growth. The mind in that 
case loses its appetite for higher methods and wider general- 

Soizations. The law of apperception, we are told, proves that 
temporary methods of solving problems should not be so thor- 
oughly mastered as to be used involuntarily or as a matter of 
unconscious habit, for the reason that a higher and a more 
adequate method of solution will then be found more difficult 
35 to acquire. The more thoroughly a method is learned, the 
more it becomes part of the mind and the greater the repug- 
nance of the mind toward a new method. For this reason 



1895] Co7nmittee of fifteen 39 

parents and teachers discourage young children from the prac- 
tice of counting on the fingers, believing that it will cause 
much trouble later to root out this vicious habit and replace 
it by purely mental processes. Teachers should be careful, 
especially with precocious children, not to continue too long 5 
in the use of a process that is becoming mechanical ; for it is 
already growing into a second nature, and becoming a part of 
the unconscious apperceptive process by which the mind reacts 
against the environment, recognizes its presence, and explains 
it to itself. The child that has been overtrained in arithmetic 10 
reacts apperceptively against his environment chiefly by notic- 
ing its numerical relations — he counts and adds ; his other 
apperceptive reactions being feeble, he neglects qualities and 
causal relations. Another child who has been drilled in recog- 
nizing colors apperceives the shades of color to the neglect of 15 
all else. A third child, excessively trained in form studies by 
the constant use of geometric solids and much practice in 
looking for the fundamental geometric forms lying at the 
basis of the multifarious objects that exist in the world, will as 
a matter of course apperceive geometric forms, ignoring the 20 
other phases of objects. 

It is, certainly, an advance on immediate sense-perception to 
be able to separate or analyze the concrete, whole impression, 
and consider the quantity apart by itself. But if arrested 
mental growth takes place here the result is deplorable. That 25 
such arrest may be caused by too exclusive training in recog- 
nizing numerical relations is beyond a doubt. 

Your Committee believes that, with the right methods, 
and a wise use of time in preparing the arithmetic lesson 
in and out of school, five years are sufificient for the study 30 
of mere arithmetic — the five years beginning with the sec- 
ond school year and ending with the close of the sixth year; 
and that the seventh and eighth years should be given to the 
algebraic method of dealing with those problems that involve 
difificulties in the transformation of quantitative indirect func-35 
tions into numerical or direct quantitative data. 

Your Committee, however, does not wish to be understood 



40 Edticatio7ial Review [March 

as recommending the transfer of algebra, as it is understood 
and taught in most secondary schools, to the seventh year or 
even to the eighth year of the elementary school. The algebra 
course in the secondary school, as taught to pupils in their 
5 fifteenth year of age, very properly begins with severe exer- 
cises with a view to discipline the pupil in analyzing complex 
literate expressions at sight and to make him able to recognize 
at once the factors that are contained in such combinations of 
quantities. The proposed seventh-grade algebra must use 

lo letters for the unknown quantities and retain the numerical 
form of the known quantities, using letters for these very 
rarely, except to exhibit the general form of solution or what, 
if stated in words, becomes a so-called "rule" in arithmetic. 
This species of algebra has the character of an introduction or 

15 transitional step to algebra proper. The latter should be 
taught thoroughly in the secondary school. Formerly it was 
a common practice to teach elementary algebra of this sort in 
the preparatory schools and reserve for the college a study of 
algebra proper. But in this case there was often a neglect of 

20 sufficient practice in factoring literate quantities, and as a conse- 
quence the pupil suffered embarrassment in his more advanced 
mathematics, for example in analytical geometry, the differ- 
ential calculus, and mechanics. The proposition of your 
Committee is intended to remedy the two evils already 

25 named: first to aid the pupils in the elementary school to 
solve, by a higher method, the more difficult problems that 
now find place in advanced arithmetic; and secondly, to pre- 
pare the pupil for a thorough course in pure algebra in the 
secondary school. 

30 Your Committee is of the opinion that the so-called mental 
arithmetic should be made to alternate with written arithmetic 
for two years and that there should not be two daily lessons 
in this subject. 

C. Geography 

The leading branch of the seven liberal arts was grammar, 
35 being the first of the Triviiun (grammar, rhetoric, and logic). 



1895] Committee of fifteen 41 

Arithmetic, however, led the second division, the Quadri- 
viiim (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). We have 
glanced at the reasons for the place of grammar as leading 
the humane studies as well as for the place of arithmetic as 
leading the nature studies. Following arithmetic as the second 5 
study in importance among the branches that correlate man to 
nature is geography. It is interesting to note that the old 
quadrivium of the Middle Ages included geography, under the 
title of geometry, as the branch following arithmetic in the enu- 
meration ; the subject matter of their so-called "geometry"being 10 
chiefly an abridgment of Pliny's geography, to which were 
added a few definitions of geometric forms, something like the 
primary course in geometric solids in our elementary schools. 
So long as there has been elementary education there has been 
something of geography included. The Greek education laid 15 
stress on teaching the second book of Homer containing the 
Catalogue of the Ships and a brief mention of the geography 
and history of all the Greek tribes that took part in the Trojan 
War. History remains unseparated from geography and 
geometry in the Middle Ages. Geography has preserved this 20 
comprehensiveness of meaning as a branch of the study in the 
elementary schools down to the present day. After arith- 
metic, which treats of the abstract or general conditions of 
material existence, comes geography with a practical study of 
man's material habitat 2,x\d its relations to him. It is not a 25 
simple science by itself, like botany or geology or astronomy, 
but a collection of sciences levied upon to describe the earth as 
the dwelling-place of man and to explain something of its more 
prominent features. About one-fourth of the material relates 
strictly to the geography, about one-half to the inhabitants, 30 
their manners, customs, institutions, industries, productions, 
and the remaining one-fourth to items drawn from the sciences 
of mineralogy, meteorology, botany, zoology, and astronomy. 
This predominance of the human feature in a study ostensibly 
relating to physical nature, your Committee considers necessary 35, 
and entirely justifiable. The child commences with what is 
nearest to his interests, and proceeds gradually toward what is 



42 Educatio7ial Review [March 

remote and to be studied for its own sake. It is therefore a 
mistake to suppose that the first phase of geography presented 
to the child should be the process of continent formation. He 
must begin with the natural differences of climate and lands 

5 and waters and obstacles that separate peoples, and study the 
methods by which man strives to equalize or overcome these 
differences by industry and commerce, to unite all places and all 
people, and make it possible for each to share in the productions 
of all. The industrial and commercial idea is therefore the 

lo first central idea in the study of geography in the elementary 
schools. It leads directly to the natural elements of difference 
in climate, soil, and productions, and also to those in race, 
religion, political status, and occupations of the inhabitants, 
with a view to explain the grounds and reasons for this 

15 counter-process of civilization which struggles to overcome the 
differences. Next comes the deeper inquiry into the process 
of continent formation, the physical struggle between the 
process of upheaving or upbuilding of continents and that of 
their obliteration by air and water; the explanation of the 

20 mountains, valleys, and plains, the islands, volcanic action, the 
winds, the rain-distribution. But the study of cities, their 
location, the purposes they serve as collecting, manufacturing, 
and distributing centers, leads most directly to the immediate 
purpose of geography in the elementary school. From this 

25 beginning, and holding to it as a permanent interest, the 
inquiry into causes and conditions proceeds concentrically to 
the sources of the raw materials, the methods of their produc- 
tion and the climatic, geologic, and other reasons that explain 
their location and their growth. 

30 In recent years, especially through the scientific study of 
physical geography, the processes that go to the formation of 
climate, soil, and general configuration of land masses have 
been accurately determined, and the methods of teaching so 
simplified that it is possible to lead out from the central idea 

35 mentioned to the physical explanations of the elements of 
geographical difference quite early in the course of study. 
Setting out from the idea of the use made of the earth by 



1895] Committee of Jifteeft 43 

civilization, the pupil in the fifth and sixth years of his schooling 
(at the age of eleven or twelve) may extend his inquiries quite 
profitably as far as the physical explanations of land-shapes 
and climates. In the seventh and eighth year of school much 
more may be done in this direction. But it is believed that 5 
the distinctively human interest connected with geography in 
the first years of its study should not yield to the purely 
scientific one of physical processes until the pupil has taken 
up the study of history. 

The educational value of geography, as it is and has been in 10 
elementary schools, is obviously very great. It makes possible 
something like accuracy in the picturing of distant places and 
events and removes a large tract of mere superstition from 
the mind. In the days of newspaper reading one's stock of 
geographical information is in constant requisition. A war on 15 
the opposite side of the globe is followed with more interest 
in this year than a war near our own borders before the era of 
the telegraph. The general knowledge of the locations and 
boundaries of nations, of their status in civilization and their 
natural advantages for contributing to the world market, is 20 
of great use to the citizen in forming correct ideas from his 
daily reading. 

The educational value of geography is even more apparent 
if we admit the claims of those who argue that the present 
epoch is the beginning of an era in which public opinion is 25 
organized into a ruling force by the agency of periodicals and 
books. Certainly neither the newspaper nor the book can 
influence an illiterate people: they can do little to form 
opinions where the readers have no knowledge of geography. 

As to the psychological value of geography little need be 30 
said. It exercises in manifold ways the memory of forms and 
the imagination ; it brings into exercise the thinking power in 
tracing back toward unity the various series of causes. What 
educative value there is in geology, meteorology, zoology, 
ethnology, economics, history, and politics is to be found in 35 
the more profound study of geography, and, to a proportionate 
extent, in the study of its merest elements. 



44 Educational Review [March 

Your Committee is of the opinion that there has been a 
vast improvement in the methods of instruction in this branch 
in recent years, due in large measure to the geographical soci- 
eties of this and other countries. At first there prevailed 
5 what might be named sailor geography. The pupil was com- 
pelled to memorize all the capes and headlands, bays and har- 
bors, mouths of rivers, islands, sounds, and straits around the 
world. He enlivened this to some extent by brief mention of 
the curiosities and oddities in the way of cataracts, water-gaps, 

lo caves, strange animals, public buildings, picturesque costumes, 
national exaggerations, and such matters as would furnish 
good themes for sailors' yarns. Little or nothing was taught to 
give unity to the isolated details furnished in endless number. 
It was an improvement on this when the method of memoriz- 

ising capital cities and political boundaries succeeded. With 
this came the era of map drawing. The study of watersheds 
and commercial routes, of industrial productions and centers 
of manufacture and commerce, has been adopted in the better 
class of schools. Instruction in geography is growing better 

20 by the constant introduction of new devices to make plain 
and intelligible the determining influence of physical causes in 
producing the elements of difference and the counter-process 
of industry and commerce by which each difference is rendered 
of use to the whole world and each locality made a partici- 

25 pator in the productions of all. 

D. History 

The next study, ranked in order of value, for the elementary 
school is History. But, as will be seen, the value of history, 
both practically and psychologically, is less in the beginning 
and greater at the end than geography. For it relates to the 

30 institutions of men, and especially to the political state and its 
evolution. While biography narrates the career of the indi- 
vidual, civil history records the careers of nations. The 
nation has been compared to the individual by persons inter- 
ested in the educational value of history. Man has two selves, 

35 they say, the individual self, and the collective self of the 



L 



1895] Co77imittee of Jifteeji 45 

organized state or nation. The study of history is, then, the 
study of this larger, corporate,, social, and civil self. The 
importance of this idea is thus brought out more clearly in its 
educational significance. For to learn this civil self is to learn 
the substantial condition which makes possible the existence 5 
of civilized man in all his other social combinations — the 
family, the Church, and the manifold associated activities of 
civil society. For the state protects these combinations from 
destruction by violence. It defines the limits of individual 
and associated effort, within which each endeavor re-enforces 10 
the endeavors of all, and it uses the strength of the whole 
nation to prevent such actions as pass beyond these safe 
limits and tend to collision with the normal action of the other 
individuals and social units. Hobbes called the state a Levi- 
athan, to emphasize its stupendous individuality and organized 15 
self-activity. Without this, he said, man lives in a state of 
"constant war, fear, poverty, filth, ignorance, and wretched- 
ness; within the state dwell peace, security, riches, science, 
and happiness." The state is the collective man who "makes 
possible the rational development of the individual man, like 20 
a mortal God, subduing his caprice and passion and compelling 
obedience to law, developing the ideas of justice, virtue, and 
religion, creating property and ownership, nurture and educa- 
tion." The education of the child into a knowledge of this 
higher self begins early within the nurture of the family. 25 
The child sees a policeman or some town ofificer, some public 
building, a court house or a jail; he sees or hears of an act of 
violence, a case of robbery or murder followed by arrest of the 
guilty. The omnipresent higher self, which has been invisible 
hitherto, now becomes visible to him in its symbols and still 30 
more in its acts. 

History in school, it is contended, should be the special 
branch for education in the duties of citizenship. There is 
ground for this claim. History gives a sense of belonging 
to a higher social unity which possesses the right of absolute 35 
control over person and property in the interest of the safety 
of the whole. This, of course, is the basis of citizenship ; the 



46 EducaHo7tal Review [March 

individual must feel this or see this solidarity of the state and 
recognize its supreme authority. But history shows the colli- 
sions of nations, and the victory of one political ideal accom- 
panied by the defeat of another. History reveals an evolution 
5 of forms of government that are better and better adapted to 
permit individual freedom, and the participation of all citizens 
in the administration of the government itself. 

People who make their own government have a special 
interest in the spectacle of political evolution as exhibited in 

10 history. But it must be admitted that this evolution has not 
been well presented by popular historians. Take, for instance, 
the familiar example of old-time pedagogy, wherein the Roman 
republic was conceived as a freer government than the Roman 
empire that followed it, by persons apparently misled by 

15 the ideas of representative self-government associated with the 
word republic. It was the beginning of a new epoch when this 
illusion was dispelled, and the college student became aware 
of the true Roman meaning of republic, namely, the supremacy 
of an oligarchy on the Tiber that ruled distant provinces in 

20 Spain, Gaul, Asia Minor, Germany, and Africa, for its selfish 
ends and with an ever-increasing arrogance. The people at 
home in Rome, not having a share in the campaigns on the 
borderland, did not appreciate the qualities of the great leaders 
who, like Caesar, subdued the nations by forbearance, mag- 

25 nanimity, trust, and the recognition of a sphere of freedom 
secured to the conquered by the Roman civil laws, which were 
rigidly enforced by the conqueror, as much as by the violence of 
arms. The change from republic to empire meant the iinal sub- 
ordination of this tyrannical Roman oligarchy, and the recog- 

3onition of the rights of the provinces to Roman freedom. This 
illustration shows how easily a poor teaching of history may 
pervert its good influence or purpose into a bad one. For the 
Roman monarchy under the empire secured a degree of freedom 
never before attained under the republic, in spite of the election 

35 of such tyrants as Nero and Caligula to the imperial purple. 
The civil service went on as usual administering the affairs of 
distant countries, educating them in Roman jurisprudence, and 



1895] Committee of fifteen 47 

cultivating a love for accumulating private property. Those 
countries had before lived communistically after the style of 
the tribe or at best of the village community. Roman private 
property in land gave an impulse to the development of free 
individuality such as had always been impossible under the 5 
social stage of development known as the village community. 

To teach history properly is to dispel this shallow illusion 
which flatters individualism, and to open the eyes of the pupil 
to the true nature of freedom, namely the freedom through 
obedience to just laws enforced by a strong government. 10 

Your Committee has made this apparent digression for the 
sake of a more explicit statement of its conviction of the 
importance of teaching history in a different spirit from that 
of abstract freedom, which sometimes means anarchy, although 
they admit the possibility of an opposite extreme, the danger 15 
of too little stress on the progressive element in the growth 
of nations and its manifestation in new and better political 
devices for representing all citizens without weakening the 
central power. 

That the history of one's own nation is to be taught in the 20 
elementary school seems fixed by common consent. United 
States history includes first a sketch of the epoch of discoveries 
and next of the epoch of colonization. This fortunately suits 
the pedagogic requirements. For the child loves to approach 
the stern realities of a firmly established civilization through 25 
its stages of growth fey means of individual enterprise. Here 
is the use of biography as introduction to history. It treats 
of exceptional individuals whose lives bring them in one way or 
another into national or even world-historical relations. They 
throw light on the nature and necessity of governments, and 30 
are in turn illuminated by the light thrown back on them by 
the institutions which they promote or hinder. The era of 
semi-private adventure with which American history begins is 
admirably adapted for study by the pupil in the elementary 
stage of his education. So too the next epoch, that of coloni-35 
zation. The pioneer is a degree nearer to civilization than is 
the explorer and discoverer. In the colonial history the pupil 



48 Educational Review [March 

interests himself in the enterprise of aspiring individualities, in 
their conquest over obstacles of climate and soil; their con- 
flicts with the aboriginal population; their choice of land for 
settlement; the growth of their cities; above all, their several 
5 attempts and final success in forming a constitution securing 
local self-government. An epoch of growing interrelation of 
the colonies succeeds, a tendency to union on a large scale 
due to the effect of European wars which involved England, 
France, and other countries, and affected the relations of their 

10 colonies in America. This epoch too abounds in heroic per- 
sonalities, like Wolfe, Montcalm, and Washington, and perilous 
adventures, especially in the Indian warfare. 

The fourth epoch is the Revolution, by which the Colonies 
through joint effort secured their independence and afterward 

15 their union in a nation. The subject grows rapidly more com- 
plex and tasks severely the powers of the pupils in the eighth 
year of the elementary school. The formation of the Consti- 
tution, and a brief study of the salient features of the Con- 
stitution itself, conclude the study of the portion of the 

20 history of the United States that is sufificiently remote to 
be treated after the manner of an educational classic. Every- 
thing up to this point stands out in strong individual out- 
lines and is admirably fitted for that elementary course of 
study. Beyond this point, the War of 1812 and the War of 

25 the Rebellion, together with the political events that led to it, 
are matters of memory with the present generation of parents 
and grandparents, and are consequently not so well fitted for 
intensive study in school as the already classic period of our 
history. But these later and latest epochs may be and will be 

30 read at home not only in the text-book on history used in the 
schools, but also in the numerous sketches that appear in news- 
papers, magazines, and in more pretentious shapes. In the 
intensive study which should be undertaken of the classic 
period of our history, the pupil may be taught the method 

35 appropriate to historical investigation, the many points of view 
from which each event ought to be considered. He should 
learn to discriminate between the theatrical show of events and 



1895] Comvtittee of fifteen 49 

the solid influences that move underneath as ethical causes. 
Although he is too immature for very far-reaching reflections, 
he must be helped to see the causal processes of history. 
Armed with this discipline in historic methods, the pupil will 
do all of his miscellaneous reading and thinking in this province 5 
with more adequate intellectual reaction than was possible 
before the intensive study carried on in school. 

The study of the outlines of the Constitution, for ten or 
fifteen weeks in the final year of the elementary school, has 
been found of great educational value. Properly taught, it 10 
fixes the idea of the essential threefoldness of the constitution 
of a free government and the necessary independence of each 
constituent power, whether legislative, judicial, or executive. 
This and some idea of the manner and mode of filling the 
oflficial places in these three departments, and of the character 15 
of the duties with which each department is charged, lay foun- 
dations for an intelligent citizenship. 

Besides this intensive study of the history of the United 
States in the seventh and eighth years, your Committee would 
recommend oral lessons on the salient points of general history, 20 
taking a full hour of sixty minutes weekly — and preferably all 
at one time — for the sake of the more systematic treatment of 
the subject of the lesson and the deeper impression made on 
the mind of the pupil, 

E. Other branches 

Your Committee has reviewed the staple branches of the 25 
elementary course of study in the light of their educational 
scope and significance. Grammar, literature, arithmetic, geog- 
raphy, and history are the five branches upon which the dis- 
ciplinary work of the elementary school is concentrated. Inas- 
much as reading is the first of the scholastic arts, it is interesting 30 
to note that the whole elementary course may be described as 
an extension of the process of learning the art of reading. 
First comes the mastering of tJie colloquial vocabulary in printed 
and script forms. Next come five incursions into the special 
vocabularies required {a) in literature to express the fine shades 35 



50 Educational Review [March 

of emotion and the more subtle distinctions of thought, {p) the 
technique of arithmetic, {c) of geography, {d) of grammar, {e) 
of history. 

In the serious work of mastering" these several technical 
5 vocabularies the pupil is assigned daily tasks that he must pre- 
pare by independent study. The class exercise or recitation is 
taken up with examining and criticising the pupil's oral state- 
ments of what he has learned, especial care being taken to 
secure the pupil's explanation of it in his own words. This 

10 requires paraphrases and definitions of the new words and 
phrases used in technical and literary senses, with a view to 
insure the addition to the mind of the new ideas corresponding 
to the new words. The misunderstandings are corrected and 
the pupil set on the way to use more critical alertness in the 

15 preparation of his succeeding lessons. The pupil learns as 
much by the recitations of his fellow-pupils as he learns from 
the teacher, but not the same things. He sees in the imperfect 
statements of his classmates that they apprehended the lesson 
with different presuppositions and consequently have seen 

20 some phases of the subject that escaped his observation, while 
they in turn have missed points which he had noticed quite 
readily. These different points of view become more or less 
his own, and he may be said to grow by adding to his own 
mind the minds of others. 

25 It is clear that there are other branches of instruction that 
may lay claim to a place in the course of study of the elemen- 
tary school ; for example the various branches of natural science, 
vocal music, manual training, physical culture, drawing, etc. 
Here the question of another method of instruction is sug- 

Sogested. There are lessons that require previous preparation 
by the pupil himself — there are also lessons that may be 
taken up without such preparation and conducted by the teacher, 
who leads the exercise and furnishes a large part of the informa- 
tion to be learned, enlisting the aid of members of the class for 

35 the purpose of bringing home the new material to their actual ex- 
perience. Besides these there are mechanical exercises for pur- 
poses of training, such as drawing, penmanship, and calisthenics. 



1895] Comfnittee of fifteen 51 

In the first place there is industrial and aesthetic drawing, 
which should have a place in all elementary school work. By 
it is secured the training of the hand and eye. Then, too, 
drawing helps in all the other branches that require illustra- 
tion. Moreover, if used in the study of the great works of art 3 
in the way hereinbefore mentioned, it helps to cultivate the 
taste and prepares the future workman for a more useful and 
lucrative career, inasmuch as superior taste commands higher 
wages in the finishing of all goods. 

Natural science claims a place in the elementary school not 10 
so much as a disciplinary study side by side with grammar, 
arithmetic, and history, as a training in habits of observation 
and in the use of the technique by which such sciences are 
expounded. With a knowledge of the technical terms and 
some training in the methods of original investigation employed 15 
in the sciences, the pupil broadens his views of the world and 
greatly increases his capacity to acquire new knowledge. For 
the pupil who is unacquainted with the technique of science 
has to pass without mental profit the numerous scientific 
allusions and items of information which more and more 20 
abound in all our literature, whether of an ephemeral or a 
permanent character. In an age whose proudest boast is the 
progress of science in all domains, there should be in the 
elementary school, from the first, a course in the elements of 
the sciences. And this is quite possible; for each science 25 
possesses some phases that lie very near to the child's life. 
These familiar topics furnish the doors through M'hich the child 
enters the various special departments. Science, it is claimed, 
is nothing if not systematic. Indeed, science itself may be 
defined as the interpretation of each fact through all other 30 
facts of a kindred nature. Admitting that this is so, it is no 
less true that pedagogic method begins with the fragmentary 
knowledge possessed by the pupil and proceeds to organize it 
and build it out systematically in all directions. Hence any 
science may be taken up best on the side nearest the experience 3*5 
of the pupil and the investigation continued until the other 
parts are reached. Thus the pedagogical order is not always 



52 Educational Review [March 

the logical or scientific order. In this respect it agrees with 
the order of discovery, which is usually something quite 
different from the logical order, for that is the last thing dis- 
covered. The natural sciences have two general divisions: one 
5 relating to inorganic matter, as physics and chemistry, and one 
relating to organic, as botany and zoology. There should be a 
spiral course in natural science, commencing each branch with 
the most interesting phases to the child. A first course 
should be given in botany, zoology, and physics, so as to treat 

loof the structure and uses of familiar plants and animals, and 
the explanation of physical phenomena as seen in the child's 
playthings, domestic machines, etc. A second course covering 
the same subjects, but laying more stress on classification and 
functions, will build on to the knowledge already acquired from 

15 the former lessons and from his recently acquired experience. 
A third course of weekly lessons, conducted by the teacher as 
before in a conversational style, with experiments and with a 
comparison of the facts of observation already in the possession 
of thechildren,willgo far to helping them to an acquisition of the 

20 results of natural science. Those of the children specially gifted 

for observation in some one or more departments of nature will 

be stimulated and encouraged to make the most of their gifts. 

In the opinion of your Committee there should be set apart 

a full hour each week for drawing and the same amount for 

25 oral lessons in natural science. 

The oral lessons in history have already been mentioned. 
The spiral course, found useful in natural science because of 
the rapid change in capacity of comprehension by the pupil 
from his sixth to his fourteenth year, will also be best for the 

30 history course, which will begin with biographical adventures 
of interest to the child, and possessing an important historical 
bearing. These will proceed from the native land first to Eng- 
land, the parent country, and then to the classic civilizations 
(Greece and Rome being, so to speak, the grandparent coun- 

35 tries of the American colonies). These successive courses of 
oral lessons adapted respectively to the child's capacity will do 
much to make the child well informed on this topic. Oral 



1895] Committee of fifteen 53 

lessons should never be mere lectures, but more like Socratic 
dialogues, building up a systematic knowledge partly from 
what is already known, partly by new investigations, and partly 
by comparison of authorities. 

The best argument in favor of weekly oral lessons in natural 5 
science and general history is the actual experiences of teachers 
who have for some time used the plan. It has been found 
that the lessons in botany, zoology, and physics give the pupil 
much aid in learning his geography and other lessons relating 
to nature, while the history lessons assist very much his com- 10 
prehension of literature, and add interest to geography. 

It is understood by your Committee that the lessons in 
physiology and hygiene (with special reference to the effects 
of stimulants and narcotics) required by State laws should 
be included in this oral course in natural science. Manual 15 
training, so far as the theory and use of the tools for working 
in wood and iron are concerned, has just claims on the elemen- 
tary school for a reason similar to that which admits natural 
science. From science have proceeded useful inventions for 
the aid of all manner of manufactures and transportation. 20 
The child of to-day lives in a world where machinery is con- 
stantly at his hand. A course of training in wood- and iron- 
•work, together with experimental knowledge of physics or 
natural philosophy, makes it easy for him to learn the manage- 
ment of such machines. Sewing and cookery have not the 25 
same but stronger claims for a place in school. One-half day 
in each week for one-half a year each in the seventh and eighth 
grades will suf^ce for manual training, the sewing and cookery 
being studied by the girls, and the wood- and iron-work by the 
boys. It should be mentioned, however, that the advocates 30 
of manual training in iron-and Avood-work recommend these 
branches for secondary schools, because of the greater maturity 
of body, and the less likelihood to acquire wrong habits of 
manipulation, in the third period of four years of school. 

Vocal music has long since obtained a well-established place 35 
in all elementary schools. The labors of two generations of 
special teachers have reduced the steps of instruction to such 



54 < Educational Review [March 

simplicity that whole classes may make as regular progress in 
reading music as in reading literature. 

In regard to physical culture your Committee is agreed 
that there should be some form of special daily exercises 
5 amounting in the aggregate to one hour each week, the same to 
include the main features of calisthenics, and German, Swedish, 
or American systems of physical training, but not to be 
regarded as a substitute for the old-fashioned recess estab- 
lished to permit the free exercise of the pupils in the open air. 

lo Systematic physical training has for its object rather the will 
training than recreation, and this must not be forgotten. To 
go from a hard lesson to a series of calisthenic exercises is to 
go from one kind of will training to another. Exhaustion of 
the will should be followed by the caprice and wild freedom 

15 of the recess. But systematic physical exercise has its suffi- 
cient reason in its aid to a graceful use of the limbs, its 
development of muscles that are left unused or rudimentary 
unless called forth by special training, and for the help it gives 
to the teacher in the way of school discipline. 

20 Your Committee would mention in this connection instruc- 
tion in morals and manners, which ought to be given in a brief 
series of lessons each year with a view to build up in the mind 
a theory of the conventionalities of polite and pure-minded 
society. If these lessons are made too long or too numerous, 

25 they are apt to become offensive to the child's mind. It is of 
course understood by your Committee that the substantial 
moral training of the school is performed by the discipline 
rather than by the instruction in ethical theory. The child is 
trained to be regular and punctual, and to restrain his desire to 

30 talk and whisper — in these things gaining self-control day by 
day. The essence of moral behavior is self-control. The school 
teaches good behavior. The intercourse of a pupil with his 
fellows without evil words or violent actions is insisted on and 
secured. The higher moral qualities of truth-telling and sin- 

35 cerity are taught in every class exercise that lays stress on 
accuracy of statement. 

Your Committee has already discussed the importance of 



1895] Committee of fifteen .55 

teaching something of algebraic processes in the seventh and 
eighth grades with the view to obtaining better methods of 
solving problems in advanced arithmetic; a majority of your 
Committee are of the opinion that formal English grammar 
should be discontinued in the eighth year, and the study of 5 
some foreign language, preferably that of Latin, substituted. 
The educational effect on an English-speaking pupil of taking 
up a language which, like Latin, uses inflections instead of 
prepositions, and which further differs from English by the 
order in which its words are arranged in the sentence, is quite 10 
marked, and a year of Latin places a pupil by a wide interval 
out of the range of the pupil who has continued English 
grammar without taking up Latin. But the effect of the 
year's study of Latin increases the youth's power of appercep- 
tion in very many directions by reason of the fact that so 15 
much of the English vocabulary used in technical vocabularies, 
like those of geography, grammar, history, and literature, is 
from a Latin source, and besides there are so many traces in 
the form and substance of human learning of the hundreds of 
years when Latin was the only tongue in which observation 20 
and reflection could be expressed. 

Your Committee refers to the programme given later in this 
report for the details of co-ordinating these several branches 
already recommended. 

The difference between elementary and secondary studies 
In recommending the introduction of algebraic processes in 25 
the seventh and eighth years— as well as in the recommenda- 
tion just now made to introduce Latin in the eighth year of 
the elementary course— your Committee has come face to 
face with the question of the intrinsic difference between 
elementary and secondary studies. 3° 

Custom has placed algebra, geometry, the history of English 
literature, and Latin in the rank of secondary studies: also 
general history, physical geography, and the elements of 
physics and chemistry. In a secondary course of four years 
trigonometry may be added to the mathematics; some of 35 



56 Educational Review [March 

the sciences whose elements are used in physical geography 
may be taken up separately in special treatises, as geology, 
botany, and physiology. There may be also a study of whole 
works of English authors, as Shakspere, Milton, and Scott. 
5 Greek is also begun in the second or third year of the 
secondary course. This is the custom in most public high 
schools. But in private secondary schools Latin is begun 
earlier, and so, too, Greek, algebra, and geometry. Sometimes 
geometry is taken up before algebra, as is the custom in 

10 German schools. These arrangements are based partly on 
tradition, partly on the requirements of higher institutions for 
admission, and partly on the ground that the intrinsic difficul- 
ties in these studies have fixed their places in the course of 
study. Of those who claim that there is an intrinsic reason 

15 for the selection and order of these studies, some base their 
conclusions on experience in conducting pupils through them, 
others on psychological grounds. The latter contend, for 
example, that algebra deals with general forms of calculation, 
while arithmetic deals with the particular instances of calcula- 

2otion. Whatever deals with the particular instance is relatively 
elementary, whatever deals with the general form is relatively 
secondary. In the expression a + b = c algebra indicates the 
form of all addition. This arithmetic cannot do, except in the 
form of a verbal rule describing the steps of the operation : its 

25 examples are all special instances falling under the general 
form given in algebra. If, therefore, arithmetic is an elemen- 
tary branch, algebra is relatively to it a secondary branch. 
So, too, geometry, though not directly based on arithmetic, 
has to presuppose an acquaintance with it when it reduces 

30 spatial functions into numerical forms, as, for example, in the 
measurement of surfaces and solids, and in ascertaining the 
ratio of the circumference to the radius, and of the hypot- 
enuse to the two other sides of the right-angled triangle. 
Geometry, moreover, deals with necessary relations; its demon- 

35 strations reach universal and necessary conclusions, holding 
good not merely in such material shapes as we have met with 
in actual experience, but with all examples possible, past. 



1895] Committee of fifteen 57 

present, or future. Such knowledge transcending experience is 
intrinsically secondary as compared with the first acquaintance 
with geometric shapes in concrete examples. 

In the case of geometry it is claimed by some that what is 
called "inventional geometry" may be properly introduced into 5 
the elementary grades. By this some mean the practice with 
blocks in the shape of geometric solids and the construc- 
tion of different figures from the same; others mean the 
rediscovery by the pupil for himself of the necessary relations 
demonstrated by Euclid. The former — exercises of construe- 10 
tion with blocks — are well enough in the kindergarten, where 
they assist in learning number, as well as in the analysis of 
material forms. But its educational value is small for pupils 
advanced into the use of books. The original discovery of 
Euclid's demonstrations, on the other hand, belongs more prop- 15 
erly to higher education than to elementary. In the geometrical 
text-books recently introduced into secondary schools there is 
so much of original demonstration required that the teacher is 
greatly embarrassed on account of the differences in native 
capacity for mathematics that develop among the pupils of the 20 
same class in solving the problems of invention. A few gifted 
pupils delight in the inventions, and develop rapidly in power, 
while the majority of the class use too much time over them, 
and thus rob the other branches of the course of study, or else 
fall into the bad practice of getting help from others in the 25 
preparation of their lessons. A few in every class fall hope- 
lessly behind and are discouraged. The result is an attempt on 
the part of the teacher to correct the evil by requiring a more 
thorough training in the mathematical studies preceding, and 
the consequent delay of secondary pupils in the lower grades of 30 
the course in order to bring up their "inventional geometry." 
Many, discouraged, fail to go on; many more fail to reach, 
higher studies because unable to get over the barrier unnecs^s- 
sarily placed before them by teachers who desire that no pupils' 
except natural geometricians shall enter into higher studies. 35 

Physical geography in its scientific form is very properly 
made a part of the secondary course of study. The pupil in 



58 Educational Review [March 

his ninth year of work can profitably acquire the scientific 
technique of geology, botany, zoology, meteorology, and 
ethnology, and in the following years take up those sciences 
separately and push them further, using the method of actual 
5 investigation. The subject-matter of physical geography is of 
very high interest to the pupil who has studied geography in 
the elementary grades after an approved method. It takes up 
the proximate grounds and causes for the elements of differ- 
ence on the earth's surface, already become familiar to him 

lo through his elementary studies, and pushes them back into 
deeper, simpler, and more satisfactory principles. This study 
performs the work also of correlating the sciences that relate to 
organic nature by showing their respective uses to man. From 
the glimpses which the pupil gets of mineralogy, geology, 

1 5 botany, zoology, ethnology, and meteorology in their necessary 
connection as geographic conditions he sees the scope and 
grand significance of those separate inquiries. A thirst is 
aroused in him to pursue his researches into their domains. 
He sees, too, the borderlands in which new discoveries may be 

2omade by the enterprising explorer. 

Physics, including what was called until recently "natural 
philosophy," after Newton's Priiicipia {PJiilosophice naturalis 
principia matheniaticd), implies more knowledge of mathe- 
matics for its thorough discussion than the secondary pupil is 

25 likely to possess. In fact, the study of this branch in college 
thirty years ago was crippled by the same cause. It should 
follow the completion of analytical geometry. Notwithstand- 
ing this, a very profitable study of this subject may be made 
in the second year of the high school or preparatory school, 

3oalthough the formulas can then be understood in so far as they 
imply elementary algebra only. The pupil does not get the 
most exact notions of the quantitative laws that rule matter in 
its states of motion and equilibrium, but he does see the action 
of forces as qualitative elements of phenomena, and understand 

35 quite well the mechanical inventions by which men subdue them 
for his use and safety. Even in the elementary grades the pupil 
can seize very many of these qualitative aspects and learn the 



1895] Committee of fifteen 59 

explanation of the mechanical phenomena of nature, and 
other applications of the same principles in invention, as for 
example, gravitation in falling bodies : its measurement by the 
scales; the part it plays in the pump, the barometer, the pen- 
dulum ; cohesion in mud, clay, glue, paste, mortar, cement, etc. ; 5 
capillary attraction in lamp-wicks, sponges, sugar, the sap in 
plants; the applications of lifting by the lever, pulley, inclined 
plane, wedge, and screw; heat in the sun, combustion, fric- 
tion, steam, thermometer, conduction, clothing, cooking, etc. : 
the phenomena of light, electricity, magnetism, and the 10 
explanation of such mechanical devices as spectacles, tele- 
scopes, microscopes, prisms, photographic cameras, electric 
tension in bodies, lightning, mariner's compass, horseshoe mag- 
net, the telegraph, the dynamo. This partially qualitative 
study of forces and mechanical inventions has the educational 15 
effect of enlightening the pupil, and emancipating him from 
the network of superstition that surrounds him in the child 
world, partly of necessity and partly by reason of the illiterate 
adults that he sometimes meets with in the persons of nurses, 
servants, and tradespeople, whose occupations have more 20 
attraction for him than those of cultured people. The fairy 
world is a world of magic, of immediate interventions of 
supernatural spiritual beings, and while this is proper enough 
for the child up to the time of the school, and in a lessening 
degree for some time after, it is only negative and harmful in 25 
adult manhood and womanhood. It produces arrested devel- 
opment of powers of observation and reflection in reference to 
phenomena, and stops the growth of the soul at the infantine 
stage of development. Neither is this infantine stage of 
wonder and magic more religious than the stage of disillusion 30 
through the study of mathematics and physics. It is the 
arrest of religious development also, at the stage of fetichism. 
The highest religion, that of pure Christianity, sees in the 
world infinite mediations, all for the purpose of developing 
independent individuality; the perfection of human souls not 35 
only in one kind of piety, namely that of the heart, but in the 
piety of the intellect that beholds truth, the piety of the will 



6o Educational Review [March 

that does good deeds wisely, the piety of the senses that sees 
the beautiful and realizes it in works of art. This is the Chris- 
tian idea of divine Providence as contrasted with the heathen 
idea of that Providence, and the study of natural philosophy 
sis an essential educational requisite in its attainment, although 
a negative means. Of course there is danger of replacing the 
spiritual idea of the divine by the dynamical or mechanical 
idea and thus arresting the mind at the stage of pantheism 
instead of fetichism. But this danger can be avoided by further 

lo education through secondary into higher education, whose 
entire spirit and method are comparative and philosophical in 
the best sense of the term. For higher education seems to 
have as its province the correlation of the several branches of 
human learning in the unity of the spiritual view furnished by 

15 religion to our civilization. By it one learns to see each branch, 
each science or art or discipline, in the light of all the others. 
This higher or comparative view is essential to any complete- 
ness of education, for it alone prevents the one-sidedness of 
hobbies, or "fads" as they are called in the slang of the day. 

20 It prevents also the bad effects that flow from the influence 
of what are termed "self-educated men," who for the most part 
carry up with them elementary methods of study, or at best, 
secondary methods, which accentuate the facts and relations 
of natural and spiritual phenomena, but do not deal with their 

25 higher correlations. The comparative method cannot, in fact, 
be well introduced until the student is somewhat advanced, 
and has already completed his elementary course of study 
dealing with the immediate aspects of the world, and his 
secondary course dealing with the separate formal and dynam- 

3oical aspects that lie next in order behind the facts of first 
observation. Higher education in a measure unifies these separ- 
ate formal and dynamic aspects, corrects their one-sidedness, 
and prevents the danger of what is so often noted in the self- 
educated men who unduly exaggerate some one of the subordi- 

35 nate aspects of the world and make it a sort of first principle. 

Here your Committee finds in its way the question of the 

use of the full scientific method in the teaching of science in 



1895] Committee of fifteen 61 

the elementary school. The true method has been called the 
method of investigation, but that method as used by the child 
is only a sad caricature of the method used by the mature 
scientific man, who has long since passed through the fragmen- 
tary observation and reflection that prevail in the period of 5 
childhood, as well as the tendencies to exaggeration of the 
importance of one or another branch of knowledge at the 
expense of the higher unity that correlates all ; an exaggeration 
that manifests itself in the possession and use of a hobby. 
The ideal scientific man has freed himself from obstacles of 10 
this kind, whether psychological or objective. What astronom- 
ical observers call the subjective coefficient must be ascer- 
tained and eliminated from the record that shows beginnings, 
endings, and rates. There is a possibility of perfect speciali- 
'zation in a scientific observer only after the elementary and 15 
secondary attitudes of mind have been outgrown. An attempt 
to force the child into the full scientific method by specializa- 
tion would cause an arrest of his development in the other 
branches of human learning outside of his specialty. He could 
not properly inventory the data of his own special sphere unless 20 
he knew how to recognize the defining limits or boundaries 
that separate his province from its neighbors. The early days 
of science abounded in examples of confusion of provinces in 
the inventories of their data. It is difficult, even now, to decide 
where physics and chemistry leave off, and biology begins. 25 

Your Committee does not attempt to state the exact propor- 
tion in which the child, at his various degrees of advancement, 
may be able to dispense with the guiding influence of teacher 
and text-book in his investigations, but they protest strongly 
against the illusion under which certain zealous advocates of 30 
the early introduction of scientific method seem to labor. 
They ignore in their zeal the deduction that is to be made for 
the guiding hand of the teacher, who silently furnishes to the 
child the experience that he lacks, and quietly directs his 
special attention to this or to that phase, and prevents him 35 
from hasty or false generalization as well as from undue exag- 
geration of single facts or principles. Here the teacher adds 



62 Edticational Review [March 

the needed scientific outlook which the child lacks, but which 
the mature scientist possesses for himself. 

It is contended by some that the scientific frame of mind is 
adapted only to science, but not to art, literature, and religion, 
5 which have something essential that science does not reach; 
not because of the incompleteness of the sciences themselves, 
but because of the attitude of the mind assumed in the obser- 
vation of nature. In analytic investigation there is isolation of 
parts one from another, with a view to find the sources of the 

lo influences which produce the phenomena shown in the object. 
The mind brings everything to the test of this idea. Every 
phenomenon that exists comes from beyond itself, and analysis 
will be able to trace the source. 

Now, this frame of mind, which insists on a foreign origin of 

15 all that goes to constitute an object, debars itself in advance 
from the province of religion, art, and literature as well as of 
philosophy. For self-determination, personal activity, is the 
first principle assumed by religion, and it is tacitly assumed by 
art and literature, Classic and Christian. The very definition 

20 of philosophy implies this, for it is the attempt to explain the 
world by the assumption of a first principle, and to show that 
all classes of objects imply that principle as ultimate presuppo- 
sition. According to this view it is important not to attempt 
to hasten the use of a strictly scientific method on the part of 

25 the child. In his first years he is acquiring the results of 
civilization rather as an outfit of habits, usages, and traditions 
than as a scientific discovery. He cannot be expected to stand 
over against the culture of his time, and challenge one and all 

, of its conventionalities to justify themselves before his reason. 

30 His reason is too weak. He is rather in the imitation stage 
of mind than in that of criticism. He will not reach the com- 
parative or critical method until the era of higher education. 

However this may be, it is clear that the educational value 
of science and its method is a very important question, and 

35 that on it depends the settlement of the question where 
specialization may begin. To commence the use of the real 
scientific method would imply a radical change also in methods 



1895] Committee of fifteeii 63 

from the beginning. This may be realized by considering the 
hold which even the kindergarten retains upon symbolism 
and upon art and literature. But in the opinion of a majority 
of your Committee natural science itself should be approached, 
in the earliest years of the elementary school, rather in the 5. 
form of results with glimpses into the methods by which these 
results were reached. In the last two years (the seventh and 
eighth) there may be some strictness of scientific form and 
an exhibition of the method of discovery. The pupil, too, 
may to some extent put this method in practice himself. In 10 
the secondary school there should be some laboratory work. 
But the pupil cannot be expected to acquire for himself fully 
the scientific method of dealing with nature until the second 
part of higher education — its post-graduate work. Neverthe- 
less this good should be kept in view from the first year of the 15 
elementary school, and there should be a gradual and con- 
tinual approach to it. 

In the study of general history appears another branch of 
the secondary course. History of the native land is assumed 
to be an elementary study. History of the world is certainly 20 
a step further away from the experience of the child. It is 
held by some teachers to be in accordance with proper method 
to begin with the foreign relations of one's native land and 
to work outward to the world-history. The European relations 
involved in the discovery and colonization of America furnish 25 
the only explanation to a multitude of questions that the pupil 
has started in the elementary school. He should move out- 
ward from what he has already learned, by the study of a new 
concentric circle of grounds and reasons, according to this view. 
This, however, is not the usual course taken. On beginning 30 
secondary history the pupil is set back face to face with the 
period of tradition, just when historic traces first make their 
appearance. He is by this arrangement broken off from the 
part of history that he has become acquainted with and made to 
grapple with that period which has no relation to his previous 35. 
investigations. It is to be said, however, that general history 
lays stress on the religious thread of connection, though less now 



64 Educational Review [March 

than formerly. The world history is a conception of the great 
Christian thinker, St. Augustine, who held that the world 
and its history is a sort of antiphonic hymn in which God 
reads his counsels, and the earth and man read the responses. 
5 He induced Orosius, his pupil, to sketch a general history in 
the spirit of his view. It was natural that the Old Testament 
histories, and especially the chapters of Genesis, should furnish 
the most striking part of its contents. This general history 
was connected with religion and brought closer to the 

10 experience of the individual than the history of his own 
people. To commence history with the Garden of Eden, the 
Fall of Man, and the Noachian Deluge was to begin with what 
was most familiar to all minds, and most instructive, because it 
concerned most nearly the conduct of life. Thus religion fur- 

15 nished the apperceptive material by which the early portions of 

history were recognized, classified, and made a part of experience. 

Now that studies in archaeology, especially those in the Nile 

and Euphrates valleys, are changing the chronologies and the 

records of early times and adding new records of the past, 

20 bringing to light national movements and collisions of peoples, 
together with data by which to determine the status of their 
industrial civilization, their religious ideas, and the form of 
their literature and art, the concentric arrangement of all this 
material around the history of the chosen people as a nucleus 

25 is no longer possible. The question has arisen, therefore, 
whether general history should not be rearranged for the 
secondary school, and made to connect with American history 
for apperceptive material rather than with Old Testament 
history. To this it has been replied with force that the idea 

30 of a world history, as St. Augustine conceived it, is the noblest 
educative ideal ever connected with the subject of history. 
Future versions of general history will not desert this stand- 
point, we are told, even if they take as their basis that of 
ethnology and anthropology, for these, too, will exhibit a plan 

35 in human history — an educative principle that leads nations 
toward freedom and science, because the Creator of nature 
has made it, in its fundamental constitution, an evolution or 



1895] Committee of fifteen 65 

progressive development of individuality. Thus the idea of 
divine Providence is retained, though made more comprehen- 
sive by bringing the whole content of natural laws within his 
will as his method of work. 

These considerations, we are reminded by the partisans of 5 
humanity studies, point back to the educative value of history 
as corrective of the one-sidedness of the method of science. 
Science seeks explanation in the mechanical conditions of, and 
impulses received from, the environment, while history keeps 
its gaze fixed on human purposes, and studies the genesis of 10 
national actions through the previous stages of feelings, con- 
victions, and conscious ideas. In history the pupil has for his 
object self-activity, reaction against environment, instead of 
mechanism, or activity through another. 

The history of English literature is another study of the 15 
secondary school. It is very properly placed beyond the ele- 
mentary school, for as taught it consists largely of the 
biographies of men of letters. The pupils who have not yet 
learned any great work of literature should not be pestered 
wdth literary biography, for at that stage the greatness of the 20 
men of letters cannot be seen. Plutarch makes great biogra- 
phies because he shows heroic struggles and great deeds. The 
heroism of artists and poets consists in sacrificing all for the 
sake of their creations. The majority of them come off sadly 
at the hands of the biographer, for the reason that the very 25 
sides of their lives are described which they had slighted and 
neglected for the sake of the Muses. The prophets of Israel 
did not live in city palaces, but in caves ; they did not wear 
fine raiment, nor feed sumptuously, nor conform to the codes of 
polite society. They were no courtiers when they approached 30 
the king. They neglected all the other institutions — family, 
productive industry, and state — for the sake of one, the Church, 
and even that not the established ceremonial of the people, 
but a higher and more direct communing with Jehovah. So 
with artists and men of letters it is more or less the case that 35 
the institutional side of their lives is neglected, or unsymmet- 
rical, or if this is not the case it will be found prosaic and 



66 Educational Review [March 

uneventful, throwing no light on their matchless produc- 
tions. 

For these reasons should not the present use of literary 
biography as it exists in secondary schools, and is gradually 
5 making its way into elementary schools, be discouraged, and 
the time now given to it devoted to the study of literary works 
of art? It will be admitted that the exposure of the foibles 
of artists has an immoral tendency on youth : for example, 
one affects to be a poet, and justifies laxity and self-indulgence 
lo through the example of Byron. Those who support this view 
hold that we should not dignify the immoral and defective 
side of life by making it a branch of study in school. 

Correlation by synthesis of studies 

Your Committee would mention another sense in which the 
expression correlation of studies is sometimes used. It is held 

15 by advocates of an artificial center of the course of study. 
They use, for example, De Foe's Robinson Crusoe for a reading 
exercise, and connect with it the lessons in geography and 
arithmetic. It has been pointed out by critics of this method 
that there is always danger of covering up the literary features 

20 of the reading matter under accessories of mathematics and 
natural science. If the material for other branches is to be 
sought for in connection with the literary exercise, it will dis- 
tract the attention from the poetic unity. On the other hand, 
arithmetic and geography cannot be unfolded freely and com- 

25 prehensively if they are to wait on the opportunities afforded 
in a poem or novel for their development. A correlation of 
this kind, instead of being a deeper correlation such as is found 
in all parts of human learning by the studies of the college and 
university, is rather a shallow and uninteresting kind of corre- 

3olation that reminds one of the system of mnemonics, or arti- 
ficial memory, which neglects the association of facts and events 
with their causes and the history of their evolution, and looks 
for unessential quips, puns, or accidental suggestions with a 
view to strengthening the memory. The effect of this is to 

35 weaken the power of systematic thinking which deals with 



1895] Committee of fifteen 67 

essential relations, and substitute for it a chaotic memory that 
ties together things through false and seeming relations, not 
of the things and events, but of the words that denote them. 

The correlation of geography and arithmetic and history 
in and through the unity of a work of fiction is at best an 5 
artificial correlation, which will stand in the way of the true 
objective correlation. It is a temporary scaffolding made for 
school purposes. Instruction should avoid such temporary 
structures as much as possible, and when used they should be 
only used for the day, and not for the year, because of the 10 
danger of building up an apperceptive center in the child's 
mind that will not harmonize with the true apperceptive center 
required by the civilization. The story of Robinson Crusoe 
has intense interest to the child as a lesson in sociology, show- 
ing him the helplessness of isolated man and the re-enforce- 15 
ment that comes to him through society. It shows the impor- 
tance of the division of labor. All children should read this 
book in the later years of the elementary course, and a few 
profitable discussions may be had in school regarding its sig- 
nificance. But De Foe painted in it only the side of adventure 20 
that he found in his countrymen in his epoch, England after 
the defeat of the Armada having taken up a career of con- 
quest on the seas, ending by colonization and a world com- 
merce. The liking for adventure continues to this day among 
all Anglo-Saxon peoples, and beyond other nationalities there 25 
is in English-speaking populations a delight in building up 
civilization from the very foundation. This is only, however, 
one phase of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Consequently the his- 
tory of Crusoe is not a proper center for a year's study in 
school. It omits cities, governments, the world commerce, 30 
the international process, the Church, the newspaper and book 
from view, and they are not even reflected in it. 

Your Committee would call attention in this connection to the 
importance of the pedagogical principle of analysis and isolation 
as preceding synthesis and correlation. There should be rigid 35 
isolation of the elements of each branch for the purpose of get- 
ting a clear conception of what is individual and peculiar in a 



68 Educational Review [March 

special province of learning. Otherwise one will not gain from 
each its special contribution to the whole. That there is some 
danger from the kind of correlation that essays to teach all 
branches in each will be apparent from this point of view. 

III. THE SCHOOL PROGRAMME 

5 In order to find a place in the elementary school for the 
several branches recommended in this report, it will be nec- 
essary to use economically the time allotted for the school 
term, which is about two hundred days, exclusive of vacations 
and holidays. Five days per week and five hours of actual 

lo school work or a little less per day, after excluding recesses for 
recreation, give about twenty-five hours per week. There 
should be, as far as possible, alternation of study-hours and 
recitations (the w^ord recitation being used in the United 
States for class exercise or lesson conducted by the teacher 

15 and requiring the critical attention of the entire class). Those 
studies requiring the clearest thought should be taken up, as a 
usual thing, in the morning session, say arithmetic the second 
half hour of the morning and grammar the half-hour next 
succeeding the morning recess for recreation in the open air. 

20 By some who are anxious to prevent study at home, or at least 
to control its amount, it is thought advisable to place the 
arithmetic lesson after the grammar lesson, so that the study 
learned at home will be grammar instead of arithmetic. It is 
found by experience that if mathematical problems are taken 

25 home for solution two bad habits arise, namely, in one case, the 
pupil gets assistance from his parents or others, and thereby 
loses to some extent his own power of overcoming difficulties 
by brave and persistent attacks unaided by others ; the other 
evil is a habit of consuming long hours in the preparation of a 

30 lesson that should be prepared in thirty minutes, if all the 
powers of mind are fresh and at command. An average child 
may spend three hours in the preparation of an arithmetic 
lesson. Indeed, in repeated efforts to solve one of the so- 
called " conundrums," a whole family may spend the entire 

35 evening. One of the unpleasant results of the next day is 



1895] ~ Co7ninittee of fifteen 69 

that the teacher who conducts the lesson never knows the 
exact capacity and rate of progress of his pupils ; in the 
recitation he probes the knowledge and preparation of the 
pupil, plus an unknown amount of preparatory work borrowed 
from parents and others. He even increases the length of the 5 
lessons, and requires more work at home, when the amount 
already exceeds the unaided capacity of the pupil. 

The lessons should be arranged so as to bring in such exer- 
cises as furnish relief from intellectual tension between others 
that make large demands on the thinking powers. Such exer- 10 
cises as singing and calisthenics, writing and drawing, also read- 
ing, are of the nature of a relief from those recitations that tax 
the memory, critical alertness, and introspection, like arithme- 
tic, grammar, and history. 

Your Committee has not been able to agree on the question 15 
whether pupils who leave school early should have a course of 
study different from the course of those who are to continue 
on into secondary and higher work. It is contended, on the 
one hand, that those who leave early should have a more practi- 
cal course, and that they should dispense with those studies 20 
that seem to be in the nature of preparatory work for sec- 
ondary and higher education. Such studies as algebra and 
Latin, for example, should not be taken up unless the pupil 
expects to pursue the same for a sufficient time to complete 
the secondary course. It is replied, on the other hand, that it 25 
is best to have one course for all, because any school education 
is at best but an initiation for the pupil into the art of learn- 
ing, and that wherever he leaves off in his school course he 
should continue, by the aid of the public library and home 
study, in the work of mastering science and literature. It is 30 
further contended that a brief course in higher studies, like 
Latin and algebra, instead of being useless, is of more value 
than any elementary studies that might replace them. The 
first ten lessons in algebra give the pupil the fundamental idea 
of the general expression of arithmetical solutions by means 35 
of letters and other symbols. Six months' study of it gives 
him the power to use the method in stating the manifold con- 



yo Educational Review [March 

ditions of a problem in partnership, or in ascertaining a value 
that depends on several transformations of the data given. It 
is claimed, indeed, that the iirst few lessons in any branch are 
relatively of more educational value than an equal number of 
5 subsequent lessons, because the fundamental ideas and princi- 
ples of the new study are placed at the beginning. In Latin, 
for instance, the pupil learns in his first week's study the to 
him strange phenomenon of a language that performs by 
inflections what his own language performs by the use of prep- 

loositions and auxiliaries. He is still more surprised to find that 
the order of words in a sentence is altogether different in Ro- 
man usage from that to which he is accustomed. He further 
begins to recognize in the Latin words many roots or stems 
which are employed to denote immediate sensuous objects, 

15 while they have been adopted into his English tongue to 
signify fine shades of distinction in thought or feeling. By 
these three things his powers of observation in matters of 
language are armed, as it were, with new faculties. Nothing 
that he has hitherto learned in grammar is so radical and far- 

20 reaching as what he learns in his first week's study of Latin. 
The Latin arrangement of words in a sentence indicates a dif- 
ferent order of mental arrangement in the process of appre- 
hension and expression of thought. This arrangement is ren- 
dered possible by declensions. This amounts to attaching 

25 prepositions to the ends of the words, which they thus convert 
into adjectival or adverbial modifiers; whereas the separate 
prepositions of the English must indicate by their position in 
the sentence their grammatical relation. These observations, 
and the new insight into the etymology of English words hav- 

30 ing a Latin derivation, are of the nature of mental seeds which 
will grow and bear fruit throughout life in the better command 
of one's native tongue. All this will come from a very brief 
time devoted to Latin in school. 

Amount of time for each brancli 

Your Committee recommends that an hour of sixty minutes 
35 each week be assigned in the programme for each of the fol- 



1895] Committee of fifteen 71 

lowing subjects throughout the eight years : physical culture, 
vocal music, oral lessons in natural science (hygiene to be 
included among the topics under this head), oral lessons in 
biography and general history, and that the same amount of 
time each week shall be devoted to drawing from the second 5 
year to the eighth inclusive ; to manual training during the 
seventh and eighth years so as to include sewing and cookery 
for the girls, and work in wood and iron for the boys. 

Your Committee recommends that reading be given at least 
one lesson each day for the entire eight years, it being under- 10 
stood, however, that there shall be two or more lessons each day 
in reading in the first and second years, in which the recitation 
is necessarily very short, because of the inability of the pupil to 
give continued close attention, and because he has little power 
of applying himself to the work of preparing lessons by him- 15 
self. In the first three years the reading should be limited to 
pieces in the colloquial style, but selections from the classics 
of the language in prose and in poetry shall be read to the 
pupil from time to time, and discussions made of such features 
of the selections read as may interest the pupils. After the 20 
third year your Committee believes that the reading lesson 
should be given to selections from classic authors of English, 
and that the work of the recitation should be divided between 
{a) the elocution, {p) the grammatical peculiarities of the lan- 
guage, including spelling, definitions, syntactical construction, 25 
punctuation, and figures of prosody, and (<:) the literary con- 
tents, including the main and accessory ideas, the emotions 
painted, the deeds described, the devices of style to produce a 
strong impression on the reader. Your Committee wishes to lay 
emphasis on the importance of the last item, — that of literary 30 
study, — which should consume more and more of the time of 
the recitation from grade to grade in the period from the fourth 
to the eighth year. In the fourth year and previously the first 
item — that of elocution, to secure distinct enunciation and 
correct pronunciation — should be most prominent. In the 35 
fifth and sixth years the second item — that of spelling, defin- 
ing, and punctuation — should predominate slightly over the 



72 Edticational Review [March 

other two items. In the years from the fifth to the eighth 
there should be some reading of entire stories, such as 
Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Rip Van Winkle, The 
Lady of the Lake, Hiawatha, and similar stories adapted in 
5 style and subject-matter to the capacity of the pupils. An 
hour should be devoted each week to conversations on the 
salient points of the story, its literary and ethical bearings. 

Your Committee agrees in the opinion that in teaching 
language care should be taken that the pupil practices much 

loin writing exercises and original compositions. At first the 
pupil will use only his colloquial vocabulary, but as he gains 
command of the technical vocabularies of geography, arithme- 
tic, and history, and learns the higher literary vocabulary of his 
language, he will extend his use of words accordingly. Daily 

1 5 from the first year the child will prepare some lesson or por- 
tion of a lesson in writing. Your Committee has included 
under the head of oral grammar (from the first to the middle 
of the fifth year) one phase of this written work devoted to the 
study of the literary form and the technicalities of composition 

20 in such exercises as letter writing, written reviews of the 
several branches studied, reports of the oral lessons in natural 
science and history, paraphrases of the poems and prose litera- 
ture of the readers, and finally compositions or written essays 
on suitable themes assigned by the teacher, but selected from 

25 the fields of knowledge studied in school. Care should be 
taken to criticise all paraphrases of poetry in respect to the 
good or bad taste shown in the choice of words ; parodies 
should never be permitted. 

It is thought by your Committee that the old style of com- 

30 position writing was too formal. It was kept too far away 
from the other work of the pupil. Instead of giving a written 
account of what he had learned in arithmetic, geography, 
grammar, history, and natural science, the pupil attempted 
artificial descriptions and reflections on such subjects as 

35 " Spring," " Happiness," " Perseverance," " Friendship," or 
something else outside of the line of his school studies. 

Your Committee has already expressed its opinion that 



1895] Committee of fifteeri y$ 

a good English style is not to be "acquired by the study of 
grammar so much as by familiarity with great masterpieces 
of literature. We especially recommend that pupils who 
have taken up the fourth and fifth readers, containing the 
selections from great authors, should often be required to 5 
make written paraphrases of prose or poetic models of style, 
using their own vocabulary to express the thoughts so far as 
possible, and borrowing the rechercJie words and phrases of 
the author, where their own resources fail them. In this way 
the pupil learns to see what the great author has done to en- 10 
rich the language and to furnish adequate means of expression 
for what could not be presented in words before, or at least 
not in so happy a manner. 

Your Committee believes that every recitation is, in one 
aspect of it, an attempt to express the thoughts and informa-15 
tion of the lesson in the pupil's own words, and thus an initial 
exercise in composition. The regular weekly written review 
of the important topics in the several branches studied is a 
more elaborate exercise in composition, the pupil endeavoring 
to collect what he knows and to state it systematically and 20 
in proper language. The punctuation, spelling, syntax, pen- 
manship, choice of words, and style should not, it is true, be 
made a matter of criticism in connection with the other lessons, 
but only in the language lesson proper. But the pupil will learn 
language, all the same, by the written and oral recitations. The 25 
oral grammar lessons from the first year to the middle of the 
fifth year, should deal chiefly with the use of language, gradually 
introducing the grammatical technique as it is needed to describe 
accurately the correct forms and the usages-violated. 

Your Committee believes that there is some danger of wast- 3^ 
ing the time of the pupil in these oral and written language 
lessons in the first four years by confining the work of the 
pupil to the expression of ordinary commonplace ideas not 
related to the subjects of his other lessons, especially when the 
expression is confined to the colloquial vocabulary. Such 35 
training has been severely and justly condemned as teaching 
what is called prating or gabbling, rather than a noble use of 



74 Educational Review [March 

English speech. It Is clear that the pupil should have a digni- 
fied and worthy subject of composition, and what is so good 
for his purpose as the themes he has tried to master in his 
regular lessons ? The reading lessons will give matter for 
5 literary style, the geography for scientific style, and the arith- 
metic for a business style ; for all styles should be learned. 

Your Committee recommends 4;hat selected lists of words 
difficult to spell be made from the reading lessons and mastered 
by frequent writing and oral spelling during the fourth, fifth, 
loand sixth years. 

Your Committee recommends that the use of a text-book in 
grammar begin with the second half of the fifth year, and con- 
tinue until the beginning of the study of Latin in the eighth 
grade, and that one daily lesson of twenty-five or thirty min- 
15 utes be devoted to it. 

For Latin we recommend one daily lesson of thirty minutes 
for the eighth year. For arithmetic we recommend number 
work from the first year to the eighth, one lesson each day, but 
the use of the text-book in number should not, in our opinion, 
20 begin until the first quarter of the third year. We recommend 
that the applications of elementary algebra to arithmetic, as 
hereinbefore explained, be substituted for pure arithmetic in 
the seventh and eighth years, a daily lesson being given. 

Your Committee recommends that penmanship as a separate 
25 branch be taught in the first six years at least three lessons per 
week. 

Geography, in the opinion of your Committee, should begin 

with oral lessons in the second year, and with a text-book in the 

third quarter of the third year, and be continued to the close of 

30 the sixth year with one lesson each day, and in the seventh and 

eighth years with three lessons per week. 

History of the United States with the use of a text-book, 
your Committee recommends for the seventh and the first half 
of the eighth year, one lesson each day ; the Constitution of 
35 the United States for the third quarter of the eighth year. 

The following schedule will show the number of lessons per 
week for each quarter of each year : 



1895] Committee of fifteen 75 

Reading-. Eight years, with daily lessons. 

Penmanship. Six years, ten lessons per week for first two years, five for 
third and fourth, and three for fifth and sixth. 

Spelling Lists. Fourth, fifth, and sixth years, four lessons per week. 

Grammar. Oral, with composition or dictation, first year to middle of fifth 5 
year, text-book from middle of fifth year to close of seventh year, five 
lessons per week. (Composition writing should be included under this 
head. But the written examinations on the several branches should be 
counted under the head of composition work.) 

Latin or French or German. Eighth year, five lessons per week. 10 

Arithmetic. Oral first and second year, text-book third to sixth year, five 
lessons per week. 

Algebra. Seventh and eighth year, five lessons per week. 

Geography, Oral lessons second year to middle of third year, text-book 
from middle of third year, five lessons weekly to seventh year, and three 15 
lessons to close of eighth. 

Natural Science and Hygiene. Sixty minutes per week, eight years. 

History of United States. Five hours per week seventh year and first half 
of eighth year. 

Constitution of United States. Third quarter in the eighth year. 20 

General History and Biography. Oral lessons, sixty minutes a week, eight 
years. 

Physical Culture. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Vocal Music. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 

Drawing. Sixty minutes a week, eight years. 25 

Manual Training, Sewing and Cooking. One-half day each week in sev- 
enth and eighth years. 

Your Committee recommends recitations of fifteen minutes in 
length in the first and second years, of twenty minutes in length 
in the third and fourth years, of twenty-five minutes in the fifth 30 
and sixth years, and of thirty minutes in the seventh and eighth. 

The results of this programme show for the first and second 
years twenty lessons a week of fifteen minutes each, besides seven 
other exercises occupying an average of twelve minutes apiece 
each day ; the total amount of time occupied in the continuous 35 
attention of the recitation or class exercises being twelve hours, 
or an average of two hours and twenty-four minutes per day. 

For the third year twenty lessons a week of twenty minutes 
each, and five general exercises taking up five hours a week or an 
average of one hour per day, giving an average time per day of 40 
two hours and twenty minutes for class recitations or exercises. 

In the fourth the recitations increase to twenty-four (by 
reason of four extra lessons in spelling) and the time occupied 



76 



Educational Review 



[March 



in recitations and exercises to thirteen hours and an average 
per day of two hours thirty-six minutes. 



Branches 


\st year 


id year 


■^d year 


\thyear 


^thyear 


6tkyear 


T thy ear 


Zthyear 


Reading 


lo lessons a week 


5 lessons a week 


Writing 


10 lessons a week 


5 lessons a week 


3 lessons a week 




Spelling lists... 


1 
1 




4 lessons a week 






English 

Grammar 


Oral, with composition lessons 


5 lessons a week with 
text-book 




















5 lessons 




Arithmetic .... 


Oral, 6o minutes 
a week 


5 lessons a week with text-book 






Algebra 














5 lessons a week 


Geography 


Oral, 6o minutes a week 


* 5 lessons a week with text-book 


3 lessons a week 


Natural Science 
+ Hygiene. 


Sixty minutes a week 


U. S. History.. 














S lessons a 
week 




U. S. Constitu- 
tion 


















il 


General 

History 


Oral, sixty minutes a week 


Physical 

Culture 


Sixty minutes a week 


Vocal Music. . . 


Sixty minutes a week 
divided into 4 lessons 


Drawing 


Sixty minutes a week 


Manual Train. 

or Sewing -|- 

Cookery. 












One-half day each 


No. of Lessons 


daily 
exer. 


.20+7 
daily 
exer. 


20+5 
daily 
exer. 


24+5 
daily 
exer. 


27-f5 
daily 
exer. 


daily 
exer. 


23+6 
daily 
exer. 


2S+6 

daily 
exer. 


Total Hours of 
Recitations 


12 12 

1 


ixi 


13 


16J 


i6i 


17* 


I7§ 


Length of Reci- 
tions 


IS min. 


15 min. 20 min. 


20 min. 


25 min. 


25 min. 


30 min. 


30 min. 



* Begins in second half year 



In the fifth and sixth years the number of recitations 
increases to twenty-seven per week, owing to the addition of 



1895] Cominittee of fifteen 'jy 

formal grammar, and the total number of hours required for 
all is 161^ per week, or an average of 3^ per day. 

In the seventh and eighth years the number of lessons 
decreases to twenty-three, history being added, penmanship 
and special lessons in spelling discontinued, the time devoted 5 
to geography reduced to three lessons a week. But the reci- 
tation is increased to thirty minutes in length. Manual train- 
ing occupies a half-day, or 2^ hours, each week. The total is 
19 hours per week or 3^ per day. 

The foregoing tabular exhibit shows all of these particulars. 10 

IV. METHODS AND ORGANIZATION 

Your Committee is agreed that the time devoted to the 
elementary school work should not be reduced from eight 
years, but they have recommended, as hereinbefore stated, that 
in the seventh and eighth years a modified form of algebra be 
introduced in place of advanced arithmetic, and that in the 15 
eighth year English grammar yield place to Latin. This 
makes, in their opinion, a proper transition to the studies of 
the secondary school and is calculated to assist the pupil 
materially in his preparation for that work. Hitherto, the 
change from the work of the elementary school has been too 20 
abrupt, the pupil beginning three formal studies at once, 
namely algebra, physical geography, and Latin. 

Your Committee has found it necessary to discuss the ques- 
tion of methods of teaching in numerous instances, while con- 
sidering the question of educational values and programmes, 25 
because the value and time of beginning of the several 
branches depends so largely on the method of teaching. 

The following recommendations, however, remain for this 
part of their report : 

They would recommend that the specialization of teachers* 30 
work should not be attempted before the seventh or eighth 
year of the elementary school and in not more than one or 
two studies then. In the secondary school it is expected that 
a teacher will teach one or at most two branches. In the ele- 
mentary school, for at least six years, it is better, on the whole, 35 



78 Educational Review [March 

to have each teacher instruct his pupils in all the branches that 
they study, for the reason that only in this way can he hold an 
even pressure on the requirements of work, correlating it in such 
a manner that no one study absorbs undue attention. In this 
Sway the pupils prepare all their lessons under the direct super- 
vision of the same teacher, and by their recitations show what 
defects of methods of study there have been in the preparation. 
The ethical training is much more successful under this plan, 
because the personal influence of a teacher is much greater 

ID when he or she knows minutely the entire scope of the school 
work. In the case of the special teacher the responsibility is 
divided and the opportunities of special aquaintance with char- 
acter and habits diminished. 

With one teacher, who supervises the study and hears all the 

15 recitations, there is a much better opportunity to cultivate the 
two kinds of attention. The teacher divides his pupils into 
two classes and hears one recite while the other class prepares 
for the next lesson. The pupils reciting are required to pay 
strict attention to the one of their number who is explaining 

20 the point assigned him by the teacher — they are to be on the 
alert to notice any mistakes of statement or omissions of im- 
portant data, they are at the same time to pay close attention 
to the remarks of the teacher. This is one kind of attention, 
which may be called associated critical attention. The pupils 

25 engaged in the preparation of the next lesson are busy, each 
one by himself, studying the book and mastering its facts and 
ideas, and comparing them one with another, and making the 
effort to become oblivious of their fellow-pupils, the recitation 
going on, and the teacher. This is another kind of attention, 

30 which is not associated, but an individual effort to master for 
one's self without aid a prescribed task and to resist all dis- 
tracting influences. These two disciplines in attention are the 
best formal training that the school affords. 

Your Committee has already mentioned a species of faulty 

35 correlation wherein the attempt is made to study all branches 
in each, misapplying Jacotot's maxim, " all is in all " {tout est 
dans tout). 



1895] Committee of fifteen 79 

A frequent error of this kind is the practice of making every 
recitation a language lesson, and interrupting the arithmetic, 
geography, history, literature, or whatever it may be, by call- 
ing the pupil's attention abruptly to something in his forms of 
expression, his pronunciation, or to some faulty use of English ; 5 
thus turning the entire system of school work into a series of 
grammar exercises and weakening the power of continuous 
thought on the objective contents of the several branches, by 
creating a pernicious habit of self-consciousness in the matter of 
verbal expression. While your Committee would not venture 10 
to say that there should not be some degree of attention to the 
verbal expression in all lessons, it is of the opinion that it should 
be limited to criticism of the recitation for its want of techni- 
cal accuracy. The technical words in each branch should be 
discussed until the pupil is familiar with their full force. The 15 
faulty English should be criticised as showing confusion of 
thought or memory, and should be corrected in this sense. 
But solecisms of speech should be silently noted by the teacher 
for discussion in the regular language lesson. 

The question of promotion of pupils has occupied from time 20 
to time very much attention. Your Committee believes that in 
many systems of elementary schools, there is injury done by 
too much formality in ascertaining whether the pupils of a 
given class have completed the work up to a given arbitrarily 
fixed point, and are ready to take up the next apportionment 25 
of the work. In the early days of city school systems, when 
the office of superintendent was first created, it was thought 
necessary to divide up the graded course of study into years 
of work, and to hold stated annual examinations to ascertain 
how many pupils could be promoted to the next grade or 30 
year's work. All that failed at this examination were set back 
at the beginning of the year's work to spend another year in 
reviewing it. This was to meet the convenience of the super- 
intendent who, it was said, could not hold examinations to suit 
the wants of individuals or particular classes. From this arrange- 35 
ment there naturally resulted a great deal of what is called 
" marking time." Pupils who had nearly completed the work of 



8o Educational Review [March 

the year were placed with pupils who had been till now a year's 
interval below them. Discouragement and demoralization at 
the thought of taking up again a course of lessons learned 
once before caused many pupils to leave school prematurely. 
5 This evil has been remedied in nearly one-half of the cities 
by promoting pupils whenever they have completed the work 
of a grade. The constant tendency of classification to become 
imperfect by reason of the difference in rates of advancement 
of the several pupils, owing to disparity in ages, degree of 

lo maturity, temperament, and health, makes frequent reclassifica- 
tion necessary. This is easily accomplished by promoting the 
few pupils who distance the majority of their classmates into 
the next class above, separated as it is or ought to be, by an 
interval of less than half a year. The bright pupils thus pro- 

ismoted have to struggle to make up the ground covered in the 
interval between the two classes, but they are nearly always 
able to accomplish this, and generally will in two years' time 
need another promotion from class to class. 

The Procrustean character of the old city systems has been 

20 removed by this device. 

There remain for mention some other evils besides bad 
systems of promotion due to defects of organization. The 
school buildings are often with superstitious care kept apart 
exclusively for particular grades of pupils. The central build- 

25 ing erected for high school purposes, though only half filled, 
is not made to relieve the neighboring grammar school, 
crowded to such a degree that it cannot receive the classes 
which ought to be promoted from the primary schools. It 
has happened in such cases that this superstition prevailed so 

30 far that the pupils in the primary school building were kept at 
work on studies already finished, because they could not be 
transferred to the grammar school. 

In all good school systems the pupils take up new work 
when they have completed the old, and the bright pupils are 

35 transferred to higher classes when they have so far distanced 
their fellows that the amount of work fixed for the average 
ability of the class does not give them enough to do. 



i89s] Committee of fifteen 8i 

In conclusion your Committee would state, by way of expla- 
nation, that it has been led into many digressions, in illus- 
trating the details of its recommendations in this report, 
through its desire to make clear the grounds on which it 
has based its conclusions and through the hope that such 5 
details will call out a still more thorough-going discussion of 
the educational values of branches proposed for elementary 
schools, and of the methods by which those branches may be 
successfully taught. 

With a view to increase the interest in this subject your 10 
Committee recommends the publication of selected passages 
from the papers sent in by invited auxiliary committees and 
by volunteers, many of these containing valuable suggestions 
not mentioned in this report. 

William T. Harris, Chairman 
United States Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C. 



I dissent from the majority report of the Committee in 15 
regard to the following points : 

Arithmetic 

I. As to fractions : In teaching arithmetic there does not 
exist any greater diiificulty in getting small children to grasp 
the nature of the fraction as such than in getting them to 
grasp the idea of the simpler whole numbers. It is true that 20 
the fractions 3^, ^, Y^, etc., as symbols, are a little more com- 
plex than are the single digits ; but as to the real meaning, 
when once the fractional idea has been properly developed 
by the teacher and the significance of the idea appre- 
hended by the pupil, it is as easily understood as any 25 
other simple truth. Children get the idea of half, third, 
or quarter of many things long before they enter school, 
and they will as readily learn to add, subtract, multiply, 
and divide fractions as they will whole numbers. In using 
fractions they will draw diagrams and pictures representing 30 
the processes of work as quickly and easily as they illustrate 



82 Edticational Review [March 

similar work with integers. It is of course assumed that 
the teacher knows how to teach arithmetic to children, or 
rather, how to teach the children how to teach themselves. 
There is really no valid argument why children in the second, 
5 third, and fourth years in school should not master the fun- 
damental operations in fractions. Not only this, they will 
put the more common fractions into the technique of per- 
centage, and do this as well in the second and third grades as 
at any other time in their future progress. There is only one 
lonew idea involved in this operation, and that consists in giving 
an additional term — per cent. — to the fractional symbol. 
When one number is a part of another, it may be regarded as 
a fractional part or as such a per cent, of it. A great deal of 
percentage is thus learned by the pupils early in the course. 
15 Children are not hurt by learning. Standing still and lost 
motion kill. 

Every recitation should reach the full swing of the learner's 
mind, including all his acquisitions on any given topic. But 
if the teaching of fractions be deferred, as it usually is in most 
20 schools, the time may be materially shortened by teaching 
addition and subtraction of fractions together. This is simple 
enough if different fractions having common denominators are 
used at first, such as f-f f = ?, and | — | = ? Then the next 
step, after sufficient drill on this case, is to take two fractions 
25 (simple) of different units of value, as >^ + >^ = ?, and 
^ — ^ = ? Multiplication and division may be treated 
similarly. 

In decimals, the pupil is really confronted by a simpler form 
of fractions than the varied forms of common fractions. 
30 Devices and illustrations of a material kind are necessary to 
build up in the pupil's mind at the beginning a clear concept 
of a tenth, etc., etc., and then to show that one-tenth written 
as a decimal is only a shorthand way of writing yV as a com- 
mon fraction, and so on. He sees very soon that the deci- 
35mal is only a shorthand common fraction, and this notion 
he must hold to. This is the vital point in decimals. The 
idea that they can be changed into common fractions and 



1895] Committee of fifteen 83 

the reverse at will, establishes the fact in the pupil's mind 
that they are common fractions and not uncommon ones. 
Fixing the decimal point will, in a short time, take care of 
itself. 

In teaching arithmetic the steps are : (i) developing the 5 
subject till each pupil gets a clear conception of it ; (2) 
necessary drill to fix the process ; (3) connecting the sub- 
ject with all that has preceded it ; (4) its applications ; (5) 
the pupil's ability to sum up clearly and concisely what he 
has learned. 10 

2. As to abridgment : Under this head, I hold that a course 
in arithmetic, including simple numbers, fractions, tables of 
weights and measures, percentage and interest, and numerical 
operations in powers, does not fit a pupil to begin the study of 
algebra. That while he may carry the book under his arm to 15 
the schoolroom, he is too poorly equipped to make headway 
on this subject, and instead of finishing up algebra in a reason- 
able length of time he is kept too long at it, with a strong 
probability of his becoming disgusted with it. 

There are subjects, however, in the common school arith-20 
metic that may be dropped out with great advantage, to wit, 
all but the simplest exercises in compound interest, foreign 
exchange, all foreign moneys (except reference tables of 
values), annuities, alligation, progression ; and the entire sub- 
jects of percentage and interest should be condensed into 25 
about twenty pages. 

Cancellation, factoring, proportion, evolution, and involution 
should be retained. Cancellation and factoring should be 
strongly emphasized owing to their immense value in 
shortening work in arithmetic, algebra, and in more ad- 30 
vanced subjects. Some drill in the Metric System should 
not be omitted. 

J. As to mental arithmetic : Till the end of the fourth year 
the pupil does not need a text-book of mental arithmetic. So 
far his work in arithmetic should be about equally divided 35 
between written and mental. At the beginning of the fifth 
year, in addition to his written arithmetic, he should begin a 



84 Educational Review [March 

mental arithmetic and continue it three years, reciting at least 
four mental arithmetic lessons each week. The length of the 
recitation should be twenty minutes. A pupil well drilled in 
mental arithmetic at the end of the seventh year, if the school 
5 age begins at six, is far better prepared to study algebra than the 
one who has not had such a drill. There are a few problems in 
arithmetic that can be solved more easily by algebra than by the 
ordinary processes of arithmetic, but there are many numerical 
problems in equations of the first degree that can be more 

10 easily handled by mental arithmetic than by algebra. To attack 
arithmetical problems by algebra is very much like using a 
tremendous lever to lift a feather. Those who have found a 
great stumbling-block in arithmetical " conundrums," have, if 
the inside facts were known, been looking in the wrong direc- 

iStion. A deficiency of "number-brain-cells" will afford an 
adequate explanation. 

4.. Rearrangement of stibjects : There should be a rearrang- 
ing of the topics in arithmetic so that one subject naturally 
leads up to the next. As an illustration, it is easily seen that 

20 whole numbers and fractions can be treated together, and that 
with United States money, when the dime is reached, is the 
proper time to begin decimals, and that when " a square " in 
surface measure first comes up, the next step is the square of a 
number as well as its square root, and that solid measure logic- 

25 ally lands the learner among cubes and cube-roots. When he 
learns that 1728 cubic inches make one cubic foot he is pre- 
pared to find the edge of the cube. What is meant here is 
pointing the way to the next above. All depends upon the 
teacher's ability to lead the pupil to see conditions and rela- 

3otions. My contention is that truth, so far as one is capable of 
taking hold of it when it is properly presented, is always a 
simple affair. 

5. As to algebra : If algebra be commenced at the middle of 
the seventh year, let the pupil go at it in earnest, and keep at 

35 it till he has mastered it. Here the best opportunities will be 
afforded him to connect his algebraic knowledge to his arith- 
metical knowledge. He builds the one on top of the other. 



1895] Committee of fifteen 85 

The skillful teacher always insists that the learner shall estab- 
lish and maintain this relationship between the two subjects. 
To switch around the other way appears to me to be the same 
as to omit certain exercises in the common algebra, because 
they are more briefly and elegantly treated in the calculus. It 5 
is admitted that a higher branch of mathematics often throws 
much light on the lower branches, but these side-lights should 
be employed for the purpose of leading the learner onward to 
broader generalizations. Unless one sees the lower clearly, the 
higher is obscure. Build solidly the foundation on arith- 10 
metic — written and mental — and the higher branches will be 
more easily mastered and time saved. 

History of the United States 

In teaching this branch in the public schools, there does not 
appear, so far as I can see, any substantial reason why the 
pupils should not study and recite the history of the Rebel- 15 
lion in the same manner that they do the Revolutionary War. 
The pupils discuss the late war and the causes that led to it 
with an impartiality of feeling that speaks more for their good 
sense and clear judgment than any other way by which their 
knowledge can be tested. ■ They may not get hold of all 20 
the causes involved in that conflict, but they get enough to 
understand the motives which caused the armies to fight so 
heroically, and why the people, both North and South, staked 
everything on the issue. Just as the men who faced each 
other for four years and met so often in a death grapple will 25 
sit down now and quietly talk over their trials, sufferings, and 
conflicts, so do their children talk over these same stirring 
scenes. They, too, so far as my experience extends, are 
singularly free from bitterness and prejudice. It is certainly 
a period of history that they should study. 30 

The spelling-book 

In addition to the " speUing-lists," I would supplement 
with a good spelling-book. So far, no " word-list," however 



86 Educational Review [March 

well selected, has supplied the place of a spelling-book. 
All those schools that threw out the spelling-book and 
undertook to teach spelling incidentally or by word-lists failed, 
and for the same reason that grammar, arithmetic, geography, 
5 and other branches, cannot be taught incidentally as the pupil 
or the class reads Robinson Crusoe, or any other similar work. 
It is an independent study and as such should be pursued. 

James M. Greenwood, 
Superintendent of Schools, Kansas City, Mo. 



While affixing my signature to the report of this Committee 
as expressing substantial agreement with most of its leading 

lo propositions, I beg leave also to indicate my dissent from cer- 
tain of its recommendations and to suggest certain additions 
which, in my judgment, the report requires. 

I. There are other forms of true correlation which should 
be included with the four mentioned in the first part of the 

15 report and which should be as clearly and fully treated as are 
these four. 

The first is that form of correlation which is popularly 
understood by the name, and which is also called by some 
writers, concentration, co-ordination, unification, and alludes 

20 in general to a division of studies into content and form ; by 
content meaning that upon which it is fitting that the mind of 
the child should dwell, and by form the means or modes of 
expression by which thoughts are communicated. Or, it may 
be thus expressed : The true content of education is, (i), phi- 

25 losophy or the knowledge of man as to his motives and hidden 
springs of action indicated in history and literature, and (2), 
science, the knowledge of nature and its manifestations and 
laws. Its form is art, which is the deliberate, purposeful, and 
effective expression to others of that which has been produced 

30 within man by contact with other men and with nature, and is 
commonly referred to as divided into various arts, such as 
reading, writing, drawing, making, and modeling. The relation 
of content and form is that of principle and subordinate, the 



1895] Committee of fifteen 87 

latter receiving its chief value from the former. In a true 
education they are so presented to the mind of the child that 
he instinctively and unconsciously grasps this relation and is 
thereby lifted into a higher plane of thinking and living than 
if the various arts are taught, as they too commonly are, with- 5 
out reference to a noble content. This relation of form to 
content is vaguely referred to in the report, but nowhere 
definitely treated. It seems to me that it is a true form of 
correlation, and, as such, deserves special and definite treat- 
ment. Moreover, it is at present much in the minds of the 10 
teachers of this country, often in forms that are misleading 
and harmful. The fact that it adds the important element of 
interest to the dry details of common school life makes it 
especially attractive to progressive and earnest teachers, and 
this Committee should recognize its importance and make such 15 
an utterance upon it as will guide the average teacher to a 
clear comprehension of its meaning and to a wise use of it in 
the schoolroom. 

Second, there is a still higher form of correlation which is 
definitely referred to later in the report as that *' of the several 20 
branches of human learning in the unity of the spiritual view 
furnished by religion to our civilization." This in the report 
is assigned absolutely to the province of higher education. 
While I do not wish to dissent wholly from this view, since it 
is doubtless true that this higher unity cannot be comprehen- 25 
sively stated for the use of a child, yet a wise teacher can so 
present subjects to even a young child that a sense of the unity 
of all knowledge will, to a certain degree, be unconsciously 
developed in his mind. In regard to certain of the great 
divisions of human knowledge, this relation is so evident that 30 
they cannot be properly presented at all unless the relation be 
made clear. Such studies are history and geography. 

2. The recommendations upon the subject of language 
should be broadened to cover the production of good English 
by the child himself, with the suggestion of suitable topics and 35 
proper methods. This report confines itself to the absorptive 
side of education and ignores that development of power over 



83 Educational Review [March 

nature, man, and self, which comes from free exercise of facul- 
ties and free expression of thought. The study of language 
as something for the child to use himself, the great means by 
which he is to assert his place in civilization, and exert his 
5 influence for good, is nowhere referred to except in the vaguest 
way. This statement in regard to language applies almost 
equally well to drawing, and here is made evident the impor- 
tance of the form of correlation to which I have just referred. 
The proper material for the training of the child in expression 

lois that which is furnished by the study of man and nature. 
His mind being filled with high themes, he asserts his individu- 
ality, expresses himself in regard to them, and thereby gains 
at once both a closer and clearer comprehension of what he 
has studied, and also the power by which he may become a 

15 factor in his generation. 

3. I would wish to omit the word " weekly " where it occurs 
in the discussion of the subjects of general history and science, 
unless it be understood to mean that an amount of time in the 
school year equivalent to sixty minutes weekly be given to 

20 each of these subjects. It is often better to condense these 
studies into certain portions of the year, giving more time to 
them each week and using them as the basis, to a certain 
degree, of language work. I believe that, especially with 
young children, clearer concepts are produced by such con- 

25 nected study, pursued for fewer weeks, than by lessons seven 
days apart. 

4. In my judgment manual training should not be limited 
to the seventh and eighth grades, but should begin in the 
kindergarten with the simple study of form from objects and 

30 the reproduction in paper of the objects presented, and should 
extend, in a series of carefully graded lessons, through all the 
grades, leaving, however, the heavier tools, such as the plane, 
for the seventh and eighth grades. By these means an inter- 
est is kept up in the various human industries, sympathy for 

35 all labor is created, and a certain degree of skill is developed ; 
moreover the interest of the pupils in their school is greatly 
enhanced. Manual training has often proved the magnet by 



1895] Committee of fifteen 89 

which boys at the restless age have been kept in school instead 
of leaving for some gainful occupation. 

5. I desire to suggest that geometry may be so taught as to 
be a better mathematical study than algebra to succeed or ac- 
company arithmetic in the seventh and eighth grades. I do not 5 
refer particularly to inventional geometry, to which the Com- 
mittee accords a slighting attention, but to constructive geom- 
etry and the simplest propositions in demonstrative geometry, 
thus involving the comprehension of the elementary geometric 
forms and their more obvious relations. This study may be 10 
made of especial interest in connection with manual training 
and drawing, while it presents fewer difiiiculties to the imma- 
ture mind than the abstractions of algebra, since it connects 
more directly with the concrete, by which its presentation may 
often be aided. 15 

6. While agreeing fully with the majority of the Committee 
that the full scientific method should not be applied to the 
study of elementary science by young children, yet I am com- 
pelled to favor more of experimentation and observation by 
the child, and less of telling by the teacher than the report 20 
would seem to favor. 

7. I would go farther than the majority of the Committee, 
and insist that, except in rare cases, there should be no special- 
ization of the teaching force below the High School, and that 
even in the first years of the High School, so far as possible, 25 
specialization should be subordinated to a general care of the 
child's welfare and oversight of his methods of study, which 
are impossible when a corps of teachers give instruction, each 
in one subject, and see the student only during the hour of 



recitation. 



30 



8. While in the main I agree with the bald statements under 
the head " Correlation by synthesis of studies," since reference 
is made to only a very artificial mode of synthesis not at all in 
vogue in this country, I must dissent emphatically from this 
portion of the report as by inference condemning a most im-35 
portant department of correlation, to which I have referred 
earlier. The doctrine of concentration is not necessarily arti- 



90 Educational Review [March 

ficial ; rather it refers to the higher unity, of which this Com- 
mittee has spoken in glowing terms as belonging to the prov- 
ince of higher education. It also includes the division of the 
school curriculum into content and form, which this Committee 
5 inferentially adopts in its treatment of language. I do not 
believe, any more than do the majority of the Committee, 
that the entire course of study can be literally and exactly 
centered about a single subject, nor do I believe in any arti- 
ficial correlation ; but there is a natural relation of all knowl- 

lo edges, which this Committee admits in various places, and 
which is the basis of a proper synthesis of studies, according 
to the psychological principal of apperception. 

9. If by the term " oral," as applied to lessons in biography 
and in natural science, the Committee means, as the word would 

15 imply, that the instruction is to be given in the form of lec- 
tures by the teacher, I cannot in full agree with the Commit- 
tee's conclusions. As I have already stated, in natural science 
the work should be largely that of observation, and in history 
and biography, while in the very lowest grades the teachers 

20 should tell the children stories, as soon as it is possible the 
desired information should be obtained by the student through 
reading. To this end the reading lesson in school should be 
properly correlated with his other studies, and he should be 
advised as to his home reading. The information thus 

25 obtained should be the subject of conversation in the class, 
and should furnish the material for much of the written lan- 
guage work of the children. 

10. I must dissent emphatically and entirely from that por- 
tion of the report which recommends that a text-book in 

30 grammar be introduced into the fifth year of the child's school 
life. It is a question in my mind whether it would not be 
better if the text-book were not introduced into the grades 
below the High School at all. Certainly it should not appear 
before the seventh year. Such knowledge of grammar as will 

35 familiarize the child with the structure of the sentence, the 
basis of all language, and as will enable him to use correctly 
forms of speech which the necessities of expression require, 



1895] Committee of fifteen 91 

should be given orally by the teacher in connection with the 
child's written work, when needed ; but against the introduction 
of a text-book upon grammar, the most abstruse of all the sub- 
jects of the school curriculum, when the pupil is not more than 
ten years old, I must protest. Instead of that the child 5 
should devote much time, some every day, to writing upon 
proper themes in the best English he can command, furnish 
ing occasion to the teacher to correct such errors as he may 
make, and acquiring by use acquaintance with the correct 
forms of grammar. If, as will doubtless be the case in most 10 
cities, local conditions render the introduction of Latin into 
the eighth grade inadvisable, this study of grammar may be 
made in that grade somewhat more intensive. 

II. If by a text-book in geography is meant that which is 
commonly understood by the term, and not simply geographi-is 
cal reading matter, in my judgment, it should not be intro- 
duced earlier than the fifth year. 

These suggestions and expressions of dissent, if approved 
by the Committee, would necessitate some change in the pro- 
gramme submitted, the most important of which would be the 20 
making room for the production of English in the grades. 
This could be provided in the first and second grades by tak- 
ing some of the time devoted to penmanship and doing the 
work partly in connection with the reading classes. In the 
third and fourth grades it should take some of the time 25 
devoted to penmanship and should be studied also in connec- 
tion with geography and reading, and in the fifth and sixth 
grades it should take all of the time given to grammar. 

I regret to be compelled to express dissent upon so many 
points, but as most of them appear to me vital and as the 30 
differences appear to be not merely superficial but funda- 
mental, affecting and affected by one's entire educational creed, 
I cannot do otherwise. To most of the report I most gladly 
give my assent and approval. 

Charles B. Gilbert, 
Superintendent of Schools, St. Paul, Minn. 



92 Educatio7tal Review [March 

I agree most heartily with the main features of the fore- 
going report of the sub-committee on correlation of studies 
It is so admirable in its analysis of subjects and in its state- 
ment of comparative education values, and so suggestive in its 
5 practical applications to teaching, that I regret to find myself 
appearing in any way to dissent from its conclusions. Indeed 
my principal objection is not against anything contained in the 
report (unless it be against a possible inference which might 
be drawn at one point), but it refers rather to what seems to 

lome to be an omission. 

In addition to all the forms of correlation recommended in 
the report, it seems to me possible to make a correlation of 
subjects in a programme in such way that the selection of sub- 
ject-matter maybe to some extent from all fields of knowledge. 

15 These selections should be such as are related to one another 
so as to be mutually helpful in acquisition. They should be 
the main features of knowledge in the different departments. 

These different departments from which the chosen sub- 
jects should be taken must be fundamental ones and must be 

20 sufficiently numerous to represent universal culture. The 
report itself indicates conclusively what these are. 

Reference is made in the report to various attempts that 
have been made to correlate subjects of study. 

A very just criticism is made upon that attempt at correla- 

25 tion by the use of the story of Robinson Crusoe as a center of 
correlation. It is distinctly pointed out in the report that the 
experiences of Robinson Crusoe are lacking in many of the 
elements of universal culture, and in many elements of educa- 
tion needed to adjust the individual properly to the civiliza- 

30 tion of our time and country. It is equally evident that the 
attempt to make this story the center of correlation leads 
directly to trivial exercises in other subjects in order to make 
them " correlate " with Robinson Crusoe. It is also shown in 
the report that it naturally leads to fragmentary knowledge 

35 of many subjects very much inferior to that clear, logically 
connected knowledge of a subject which may be had by pur- 
suing it without reference to correlatine it with all others. 



iSgs] Committee of fifteen 93 

It is at this point that in my judgment a wrong inference 
is permitted by the report. 

It does not, as it seems to me, follow that, because correla- 
tion based on Robinson Crusoe is a failure, all correlations 
having the same general purpose will necessarily prove 5 
failures. For my own part I do not believe that correlation 
needs any " center," outside the child and its natural activi- 
ties. If, however, it seems wiser to give special prominence 
to any given field of acquisition, it should, in my judgment, 
be accorded to language and its closely related subjects — 10 
reading, spelling, writing, composing, study of literature, etc., 
etc. Indeed language as a mode of expression is organically 
related to thinking, in all fields of knowledge, as form is 
related to content. A " system " or '' programme " of cor- 
relation on this basis would seek for fundamental ideas in 15 
all the leading branches and make them themes of thought 
and occasions of language exercises. The selections would 
omit all trivialities in all subjects, and would not attempt to 
correlate for the mere sake of correlation ; but would seek to 
correlate wherever by such correlation kindred themes may be 20 
made to illuminate one another. To illustrate, concrete prob- 
lems in arithmetic would be sought that would clearly 
develop and illustrate mathematical ideas and their applica- 
tion ; but in a secondary way these problems would be sought 
for in the various departments of concrete knowledge — 25 
geography, history, physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteor- 
ology, political, industrial, or domestic economy. But none of 
these themes would be so relied upon for problems as to com- 
pel one to choose unreasonable or trivial relations on which 
to base them. The problems themselves should represent 30 
true and important facts and relations of the other subjects 
as surely and rigidly as they should involve correct mathe- 
matical principles ; and all such exercises should be rightly 
related to the child's education in language. 

In like manner, when a child is engaged in nature study of 35 
any kind, some valuable problems in mathematics may be 
found rightly related both to the subject directly in hand and 



94 Educational Reviezv [March 

the child's natural progress in arithmetic. Also many of the 
lessons in nature study are directly related to some of the 
finest literature ever produced, in which analogies of nature 
are made the means of expression for the finest and most 
5 delicate of the human experiences. When the child has 
mastered the physical facts on which the literary inspiration is 
based is the true time to give him the advantage of the study 
of such literature. These ideas are not only rightly related 
to one another, but to the mind itself. It is, so to speak, the 

10 nascent moment when the mind can easily and fully master 
what might else remain an impenetrable mystery ; and all be- 
cause subjects and occasion have come into happy conjunction. 
This is not the place in which to attempt any elaboration 
of such a system of correlation. But I feel that its absence 

15 from the report may make many persons feel that the latter. 

is so far incomplete. 

L. H. Jones, 

Superintendent of Schools, Cleveland, O. 



With the main lines of thought in this report I find myself 
in agreement. With many of its details, however, I am not in 
accord. I regret to have to express my dissent from its con- 
20 elusions in the following particulars : 

1. The report makes too little of the uses of grammar as 
supplying canons of criticism which enable the pupil to cor- 
rect his own English, and as furnishing a key (grammatical 
analysis) that gives him the power to see the meaning of 

25 obscure or involved sentences. 

2. For the study of literature, complete works are to be pre- 
ferred to the selections found in school readers. 

3. That species of language exercise known as paraphras- 
ing I regard as harmful. 

30 4. The study of number should not be omitted from the first 
year in school. Practice in the primary operations of arith- 
metic should not be omitted from the seventh and eighth 
years. The quadratic equation should be reserved for the 
High School. 



iSps] Committee of fifteen 95 

5. The foreign language introduced into the elementary- 
school course should be a modern language — French or 
German. Latin should be reserved for those who have time 
and opportunity to master its literature. 

6. In the general programme of studies, the school day is 5 
cut up into too many short periods. The tendency of such a 
programme as that in the text would be to destroy repose of 
mind and render reflection almost an impossibility. 

7. I desire to express my agreement with the opinions 
stated in Sections 2, 3, 6, and 9 of Mr. Gilbert's dissenting 10 
opinion ; and, in the main, with what Mr. Jones says on the 
correlation of studies. 

William H. Maxwell, 
Superintendent of Schools, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



Ill 

COMMITTEE OF FIFTEEN 

REPORT OF THE SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE ORGANIZATION 
OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS 

It is understood that the Committee is to treat of city 
school systems which are so large that persons chosen by the 
people to manage them, and serving without pay, cannot be 
expected to transact all the business of the system in person, 
5 nor to have personal knowledge of all business transactions ; and 
which are also so large that one person employed to supervise 
the instruction cannot be assumed to personally manage or 
direct all of the details thereof; but must, in each case, act 
under plans of organization and administration established by 

lolaw, and through assistants or representatives. 

The end for which a school system exists is the instriiction 
of the cJiilch'en, the word instruction being used with the 
meaning it attains in the mind of a well-educated person, if not 
in the mind of an educational expert. 

15 To secure this end, no plan of organization alone will 
suffice. Nothing can take the place of a sincere desire for 
good schools, of a fair knowledge of what good schools are 
and of what will make them, of a public spirit and a moral sense 
on the part of the people, which are spontaneous or which can 

20 be appealed to with confidence. Fortunately the interest 
which the people have in their own children is so large, and 
the anxiety of the community for public order and security is 
so great, that public sentiment may ordinarily be relied upon, 
or may be aroused to action, to choose proper representa- 

25 tives and take proper measures for the administration of the 
schools. If, in any case, this is not so, there is little hope of 
efficient schools. Wherever it is so, it alone will not suffice; 
but proper organization may become the instrument of public 

96 



Committee of fifteen 97 

sentiment and develop schools that will be equal to the 
needs of all and become the safeguards of citizenship. 

Efificient schools can be secured only by providing suitable 
buildings and appliances and by keeping them in proper 
order, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, by employ- 5 
ing, organizing, aiding, and directing teachers so that the 
instruction shall have life and power to accomplish the great 
end for which schools are maintained. 

The circumstances of the case naturally and quickly separate 
the duties of administration into two great departments: one 10 
which manages the business affairs, and the other which super- 
vises the instruction. The business affairs of the school 
system may be transacted by any citizens of common honesty, 
correct purposes, and of good business experience and 
sagacity. The instruction will be ineffective and abnormally 15 
expensive unless put upon a scientific educational basis and 
supervised by competent educational experts. 

There will be a waste of money and effort, and a lack of 
results, unless the authorities of these two departments are 
sympathetic with each other; that is, unless, on the one hand, 20 
the business management is sound, is appreciative of good 
teaching, looks upon it as a scientific and professional employ- 
ment, and is alert to sustain it; and unless, on the other hand, 
the instructors are competent and self-respecting, know what 
good business management is, are glad to uphold it, and are 25 
able to respect those who are charged with responsibility for it. 

To secure ef^ciency in these departments, there must be 
adequate authority and quick public accountability. The 
problem is not merely to secure some good schoolhouses, but 
good schoolhouses wherever needed, and to avoid the use of 30 
all houses which are not suitable; it is not to get some good 
teaching, but to prevent all bad teaching and to advance all 
the teaching to the highest possible point of special training, 
of professional spirit, and of life-giving power. All of the 
business matters must be intrusted to competent business 35 
hands and managed upon sound business principles; and all of 
the instruction must be put upon a professional basis. To 



98 Educational Review [March 

insure this, there must be deliberation and wisdom in deter- 
mining policy, and then the power to do what is determined 
upon must be present and capable of exercise, and the respon- 
sibility for the proper exercise of the power must, in each 
5 case, be individual and immediate. 

It is imperative that we discriminate between the legislative 
and the executive action in organizing and administering the 
schools. The influences which enter into legislative action 
looking to the general organization and work of the schools 

10 must necessarily and fundamentally flow directly from the 
people and be widely spread. The greater the number of 
people, in proportion to the entire population, who can be led 
to take a positive interest and an active part in securing good 
schools the better will the schools be, provided the people can 

15 secure the complete execution of their purposes and plans. 
But experience has clearly shown that many causes inter- 
vene to prevent the complete execution of such plans; that all 
the natural enemies of sound administration scent plenty of 
plunder and are especially active here; that good school 

20 administration requires much strength of character, much 
business experience, much technical knowledge, and can be 
measurably satisfactory only when the responsibility is ade- 
quate and the penalties for maladministration are severe. 
Decentralization in making the plan and determining what 

25 shall be done, and centralization in executing the plan and in 
doing what is to be done, are perhaps equally important. 

It should be remembered that the character of the school 
work of a city is not merely a matter of local interest, and that 
the maintenance of the schools does not rest merely or mainly 

30 upon local authority. The people of the municipality, acting, 
and ordinarily glad to act, but in any event being required to 
act, under and pursuant to the law which has been ordained 
by the sovereign authority of the State, establish and maintain 
schools. They must have the taxing power which the State 

35 alone possseses in order to enable them to proceed at all. 
They must regard the directions which the State sees fit to 
give as to the essential character of the schools, when it exer- 



1895] Committee of Jifteen 99 

cises in their behalf, or when it delegates to them, the power 
of taxation. 

The plan should be flexible for good while inflexible for 
evil. After meeting essential requirements, the people of the 
municipality may and should be empowered to proceed as much 5 
farther as they will in elaborating a system of schools. The 
higher the plane of average intelligence, and the more generally 
and the more directly the people act in deciding what shall 
be done, and the greater the facility and completeness with 
which the intelligence of the city is able to secure the proper 10 
execution of its plans by officers appointed for that purpose, 
the more elaborate and the more efficient will be the schools. 

It is idle to suggest that centering executive functions is un- 
wisely taking power away from the people. The people cannot 
execute plans themselves. The authority to do so must neces- 15 
sarily be delegated. The question simply is: Shall it be given 
to a number of persons, and, if so, to how many? Or, to only 
one? This question is to be decided by experience, and it is 
of course true that experience has not been uniform. But it 
is doubtless true that the general experience of the communi-20 
ties of the country has shown that where purely executive 
functions are conferred upon a number of persons, jointly, they 
yield to antagonistic influences and shift the responsibility 
from one to another; and that centering the responsibility 
for the proper discharge of executive duties upon a single 25 
person, who gets the credit of good work and must bear the 
disgrace or penalty of bad work, and who can quickly be held 
accountable for misdeeds and inefficiency, has secured the 
fullest execution of public plans and the largest results. To 
call this "centralization," with the meaning which commonly 30 
attaches to the word, is inaccurate. Instead of removing the 
power from the people, it is keeping the power closer to the 
people and making it possible for the citizen, in his individual 
capacity, and for organized bodies of citizens, to secure the 
execution of plans according to the purpose and intent with 35 
which those plans were made. Indeed it is safe to say that 
experience has shown that it is the only way in which to pre- 



I oo Educational Review [March 

vent the frequent thwarting of the popular will and the 
defiance of individuals whose interests are ignored or whose 
rights are invaded. . 

So much, it seems to us, is strongly supported both by 
5 reason and by experience, and is clearly manifest. 

But all the people of a city whose population is numbered by 
hundreds of thousands or millions cannot meet in a legislative 
assemblage to formulate plans for school government, any more 
than they can all meet to make plans for municipal government. 
loThey cannot even gather in mass meetings, and, if they could, 
mass meetings cannot deliberate. Even their legislative action 
must flow not from a primary but from a representative assembly. 
What shall such a representative legislative body be called? 
How shall it be chosen? Of how many members shall it be 
15 composed? And what shall be its powers? These and other 
similar questions are all-important and must be determined by 
the law-making power of the State. The sentiments of the 
city, as expressed through the local organizations and particu- 
larly through the newspapers, must of course have much 
20 weight with the legislature if there is anything like unanimity 
or any very strong preponderance of opinion in the city; for 
the plan for which a community expresses a preference will 
surely be likely to operate most effectually in that community. 
But the local sentiment is not conclusive. When divided, it 
25 is no guide at all. The legislature is to take all the circum- 
stances into consideration, take the world's experience for its 
guide, and, acting under its responsibilities, it must exercise 
its high powers in ways that will build up a system of schools 
in the city likely to articulate with the State educational 
30 system and become the effective instrument of developing the 
intelligence and training the character of the children of the 
city up to the ideals of the State. 

The name of the legislative branch of the school govern- 
ment is not material, and the one to which the people are 
35 accustomed may well continue to be employed. There is no 
name more appropriate than the "Board of Education." 

The manner of selecting the members of this legislative 



1895] Committee of fifteen loi 

body may turn somewhat upon the circumstances of the city. 
We are strongly of the opinion that in view of the well-known 
difBculty about securing the attendance of the most interested 
and intelligent electors at school elections, as well as because 
of the apparent impossibility of freeing school elections from 5 
political or municipal issues, the better manner of selection is 
by appointment. 

If the members of the board are appointed, the mayor of the 
city is likely to be the official to whom the power of appoint- 
ment may most safely be intrusted. The mayor is not sug-io 
gested because his ofifice should sustain any relations to the 
school system, but in spite of the fact that it does not and 
should not. The school system should be absolutely emanci- 
pated from partisan politics and completely dissociated from 
municipal business. But we think the appointments should 15 
be made by some one person rather than by a board. The 
mayor is representative of the whole city and all its interests. 
While not chosen with any reference to the interests of the 
schools, he may be assumed to have information as to the fit- 
ness of citizens for particular responsibilities and to be desirous 20 
of promoting the educational interests of the people. If he is 
given the power of appointment, he should be particularly 
enjoined, by law, to consider only the fitness of individuals 
and to pay no regard to party affiliations, unless it be particu- 
larly to see to it that no one political party has an overwhelm- 25 
ing preponderance in the board. The mayor very commonly 
feels constrained, under the pressure of party expediency, 
to make so many questionable appointments that he is only 
too glad, and particularly so when enjoined by the law, to 
make very acceptable appointments of members of school 30 
boards, in order that he may gratify the better sentiment of 
the city. We are confident that the problem of getting a 
representative board of education is not so difficult as many 
think, if the board is not permitted to make patronage of work 
and of salaried positions at the disposal of the public school 35 
system. Under such circumstances, and more and more so as 
we have approached such circumstances, appointment in the 



I02 Educational Review [March 

way we suggest has produced the best school boards in the 
larger cities of the country. 

Attempts to eliminate partisanship from school administra- 
tion, by arraying an equal number of partisans against each 
5 other in school boards do not at least aim at an ideal. At 
times such boards have worked well and at others have led to 
mischievous consequences. The true course is to insist that 
all who have any share in the management of the schools shall 
divest themselves of partisanship, whether political or religious, 

10 in such management, and give themselves wholly to the high 
interests intrusted to them. If it be said that this cannot be 
realized, it may be answered, without admitting it, that even 
if that were so it would be no reason why the friends of the 
schools should not assert the sound principle and secure its 

15 enforcement as far as possible. We must certainly give no 
countenance to makeshifts which experience has shown to be 
misleading and expensive. The right must prevail in the end, 
and the earlier and more strongly it is contended for the 
sooner it will prevail. 

20 The members of school boards should be representative of 
the whole population and of all their common educational 
interests, and should not be chosen to represent any ward or 
subdivision of the territory or any party or element in the 
political, religious, or social life thereof. Where this principle 

25 is not enforced, the members will feel bound to gain what 
advantage they can for the sub-district or special interests they 
represent; bitter contests will ensue, and the common interests 
will suffer. 

The number of the members of a board of education should 

30 be small. In cities of less than 500,000 inhabitants it should 
not be more than nine, and preferably not more than five. In 
the very largest cities it may well be extended to fifteen. 

The term for which m.embers are appointed should be a 
long one, say five years. 

35 We think it an excellent plan to provide for two branches 
and sets of powers in the board of education; the one to have 
the veto power, or at least to act as a check upon the acts of 



1 895 J Committee of fifteen 103 

the other. This may be accomplished by creating the office 
of School Director and charging the incumbent with execu- 
tive duties on the business side of the administration, and by 
giving him the veto over the acts of the other branch of the 
board, which may be called the School Council. Beyond 5 
the care and conservatism which are insured by two sets of 
powers acting against each other, this plan has the advantage 
of giving the chief executive officer of the system just as high 
and good a title as that of members of the board ; it is likely 
to secure a more representative man, and gives him larger pre- 10 
rogatives in the discharge of his executive duties and better 
standing among the people, particularly among the employees 
and teachers associated with the public school system. 

If this plan is adopted, the school director should be 
required to give his entire time to the duties of his position 15 
and be properly compensated therefor. He should be the 
custodian of all property and should appoint all assistants, 
janitors, and workmen authorized by the board for the care of 
this property. He should give bond with sufficient sureties 
and penalties for the faithful and proper discharge of all his 20 
duties. He should be authorized by law to expend funds, 
within a fixed limit, for repairs, appliances, and help, without 
the action of the board. All contracts should be made by 
him and should run in his name, and he should be charged 
with the responsibility of seeing that they are faithfully and 25 
completely executed. All contracts involving more than a 
limited and fixed sum of money should be let upon bids to be 
advertised for and opened in public. He should have a seat 
in the board of education, should not vote but should have 
the power to veto, either absolutely or conditionally, any of 30 
the a-cts of the board through a written communication. This 
officer and the school council should together constitute the 
board of education. 

The board of education should be vested only with legisla- 
tive functions and should be required to act wholly through 35 
formal and recorded resolutions. It should determine and 
direct the general policy of the school system. Within reason- 



I04 Educational Review [March 

able limits, as to amount, it should be given power, in its dis- 
cretion, to levy whatever moneys may be needed for school 
purposes. It should control the expenditure of all moneys 
beyond a fixed and limited amount, which may safely and 
5 advantageously be left to the discretion of the chief executive 
business officer. It should authorize, by general resolutions, 
the appointment of necessary officers and employees in the 
business department, and of the superintendent, assistants, and 
teachers in the department of instruction, but it should be 

lo allowed to make no appointments other than its own clerk. 
With this necessary exception, single officers should be 
charged with responsibility for all appointments. 

This plan, not in all particulars, but in the essential ones, has 
been on trial in the city of Cleveland, O., for nearly three years, 

15 and has worked with very general acceptability. If this plan 
is adopted, the chief executive officer of the system is already 
provided for and his duties have already been indicated. 
Otherwise it will be necessary for the board to appoint such 
an officer. In that event the law should declare him independ- 

2oent, confer upon him adequate authority for the performance 
of executive duties, and charge him with responsibility. But 
we know of no statutory language capable of making an officer 
appointed by a board, and dependent upon the same board for 
supplies, independent in fact of the personal wishes of the 

25 members of that board. And right here is where the troubles 
rush in to discredit and damage the school system. 

We now come to the subject of paramount importance in 
making a plan for the school government in a great city, 
namely, the character of the teaching force and the quality of 

30 the instruction. A city school system may be able to with- 
stand some abuses on the business side of its administration 
and continue to perform its function with measurable success, 
but wrongs against the instruction must, in a little time, prove 
fatal. The strongest language is none too strong here. The 

35 safety of the Republic, the security of American citizenship, 
are at stake. Government by the people has no more dan- 
gerous pitfall in its road than this, that in the mighty cities of 



1895] Committee of fifteen 105 

the land the comfortable and intelligent masses, who are dis- 
criminating more and more closely about the education of 
their children, shall become dissatisfied with the social status 
of the teachers and the quality of the teaching in the common 
schools. In that event, they will educate their children at 5; 
their own expense, and the public schools will become only 
good enough for those who can afford no better. The only 
way to avert this is by maintaining the instruction upon a 
purely scientific and professional footing. This is entirely 
practicable, but it involves much care and expense in training la 
teachers, the absolute elimination of favoritism from appoint- 
ments, the security of the right to advancement, after appoint- 
ment, on the basis of merit, and a general leadership which is 
kindly, helpful, and stimulating to individuals, which can 
secure harmonious co-operation from all the members, and 15 
which lends energy and inspiration to the whole body. 

This cannot be secured if there is any lack of authority, and 
experience amply proves that it will not be secured if there is 
any division of responsibility. The whole matter of instruction 
must be placed in the hands of a superintendent of instruction, 20 
with independent powers and adequate authority, who is 
charged with full responsibility. 

The danger of inconsiderate or improper action by one 
vested with such powers is of course possible, but it is remote. 
Regardless of the legal powers with which he may be indi-25, 
vidually vested, he is in fact and in law a part of a large 
system. He must act through others and in the presence of 
multitudes. There is great publicity about all he does. 
When a single officer carries such responsibility he is at the 
focus of all eyes. There are the strongest incentives to right 30 
action. Without discovery, at least by many persons, he can- 
not act wrongfully. If he is required to act under and pur- 
suant to a plan, the details of which have been announced, 
and of which we shall speak in a moment, a wrongful act will 
be known to the world and he must bear the responsibility of 35 
it, and the danger of maladministration is almost eliminated. 

Moreover, we must consider the alternative. It is not in 



1 o6 Educational Review [March 

doubt. All who have had any contact with the subject are 
familiar with it. It is administration by boards or committees, 
the members of which are not competent to manage profes- 
sional matters and develop an expert teaching-force. Yet 

5 they assume, and in most cases honestly, the knowledge 
of the most experienced. They override and degrade a 
superintendent, when they have the power to do so, until he 
becomes their mere factotum. For the sake of harmony and 
the continuance of his position he concedes, surrenders, and 

lo acquiesces in their acts, while the continually increasing teach- 
ing-force becomes weaker and weaker and the work poorer and 
poorer. If he refuses to do this, they precipitate an open 
rupture and turn him out of his position. Then they cloud the 
issues and shift the responsibility from one to another. There 

1 5 are exceptions, of course, but they do not change the rule. 

It will be unprofitable to mince words about this all-impor- 
tant matter. If the course of study for the public schools of 
a great city is to be determined by laymen, it will not be 
suited to the needs of a community. If teachers are to be 

2o appointed by boards or committees, the members of which are 
particularly sensitive to the desires of people who have votes 
or influence, looseness of action is inevitable and unworthy 
considerations will frequently prevail. If the action of a 
board or committee be conditioned upon the recommendation 

25 of a superintendent, the plan will not suffice. No one person 
is stronger than the system of which he is a part. Such a plan 
results in contests, between the board and the superintendent, 
and such a contest is obviously an unequal one. There is 
little doubt of the outcome. In recommending for the 

30 appointment of teachers, the personal wishes of members of 
the board, in particular cases, will have to be acquiesced in. 
If a teacher, no matter how unfit, cannot be dropped from the 
list without the approval of a board or committee after they 
have heard from her friends and sympathizers, she will remain 

35 indefinitely in the service. This means a low tone in the 
teaching force and desolation in the work of the schools. If 
the superintendent accepts the situation, he becomes less and 



1895] Committee of fifteen 107 

less capable of developing a professional teaching service. If 
he refuses to accept it, he is very likely to meet humiliation-, 
dismissal is inevitable unless he is strong enough to make him- 
self secure by doing the right thing and going directly to the 
people and winning their approval. 5 

The superintendent of instruction should be charged with 
no duty save the supervision of the instruction, but should 
be charged with the responsibility of making that professional 
and scientific, and should be given the position and authority 
to accomplish that end. 10 

If the board of education is constituted upon the old plan, 
he must be chosen by the board. If it is constituted upon the 
Cleveland plan, he may be appointed by the school director 
with the approval of two-thirds or three-fourths of the council. 
The latter plan seems preferable, for it centralizes the main 15 
responsibility of this important appointment in a single indi- 
vidual. In either case, the law and the sentiment of the city 
should direct that the appointee shall be a person liberally 
educated, professionally trained, one who knows what good 
teaching is, but is also experienced in administration, in touch 20 
with public affairs and in sympathy with popular feeling. 

The term of the superintendent of instruction should be 
from five to ten years, and until a successor is appointed. In 
our judgment it should be determinate so that there may be a 
time of public examination, but it should be sufificiently long 25 
to enable one to lay foundations and show results without 
being carried under by the prejudices which always follow the 
first operation of ef^cient or drastic plans. The salary should 
be fixed by law and not subject to change in the middle of a 
term or except by law. 30 

For reasons already suggested, the superintendent, once 
appointed, should have power to appoint from an eligible list 
all assistants and teachers authorized by the board, and 
unlimited authority to assign them to their respective posi- 
tions and reassign them or remove them from the force at his 35 
discretion. 

To secure a position upon the eligible list from which 



io8 Educational Review [March 

appointments may be made, a candidate, if without experience, 
should be required to complete the full four years' course of 
the city high schools, or its equivalent, and in addition thereto 
pass the examination of the board of examiners, and complete 
5 at least a year's course of professional training in a city normal 
training school under the direction of the superintendent. If 
the candidate has had say three years of successful experience 
as a teacher, he should be eligible to appointment by passing 
an examination held by a general examining board. This 

lo board may be appointed by the board of education, but should 
examine none but graduates of the high school and training 
school unless specially requested so to do by the superintend- 
ent of instruction. The number admitted to the training 
schools should be limited, and the examinations should be 

15 gauged to the prospective needs of the elementary schools, for 
new teachers. The supply of new teachers may well be 
largely, but should not be wholly, drawn from this local 
source. The force will gain fresh vitality by some appoint- 
ments of good and experienced teachers from outside. 

20 The work of putting a large teaching force upon a profes- 
sional basis, of making the teaching scientific and capable of 
arousing minds to action, is so dif^cult that a layman can 
scarcely appreciate it. It has hardly been commenced, it has 
been made possible only when the avenues of approach to the 

25 service have been closed against the unqualified and unworthy. 

After that, the supervision must be close and general as well 

as sympathetic and decisive. The superintendent must have 

. expert assistants enough to learn the characteristics and 

measure the work of every member of the force. They must 

30 help and encourage, advise and direct, according to the cir- 
cumstances of each case. The work must be reduced to a 
system and the workers brought into harmonious relations. 
Each room must show neatness and life, and the whole force 
must show ardor and enthusiasm. By directing the reading, 

35 by encouraging an interchange of visits, by organizing clubs for 
self-improvement, by frequent class, grade, and general meet- 
ings, the professional spirit must be aroused and the work 



1895] Committee of fifteen 109 

energized. Those who show teaching power, versatility, 
amiability, reliability, steadiness, and growth, must be re- 
warded with the highest positions; those who lack fiber, who 
have no energy, who are incapable of enthusiasm, who will not 
work agreeably with their associates, must go upon the retired 5 
list. Directness and openness must be encouraged. Attempts 
to invoke social, political, religious, or other outside influences 
to secure preferment must operate to close the door to 
advancement. In general and in particular, bad teaching must 
be prevented. In every room, a firm and kindly management 10 
must prevail and good teaching must be apparent. All must 
work along common lines which will insure general and essen- 
tial ends. Until a teacher can do this and can be relied upon 
to do it, she must be helped and directed; when it is manifest 
she cannot or will not do it, she must be dismissed : when she 15 
shows she can do it and wants to do it, she must be left to 
exercise her own judgment and originality and do it in her 
own way. In the schoolroom, the teacher must be secure 
against interference. In all the affairs of the school, her judg- 
ment must be trusted to the utmost limit of safety. Then 20 
judgment will strengthen and self-respect and public respect 
will grow. The qualities which develop in the teacher will 
develop in the school. To develop these qualities with any 
degree of uniformity, in a large teaching force, requires steady 
and uniform treatment through a long course of years under 25 
superintendence which is professional, strong, just, and cour- 
ageous; which has ample assistance and authority ; which is 
worthy of public confidence and knows how to marshal facts, 
present arguments, and appeal to the intelligence and integrity 
of the community with success. 30 

It is the business of the plan of organization to secure such 
superintendence. It cannot be secured through an ordinary 
board of education operating on the old plan. It is well 
known what the influences are that are everywhere prevalent 
and must inevitably prevent it. It may be secured in the 35 
law, and it must be secured there or it will not be secured 
at all. 



no EdiLcatioiial Review [March 

In concluding this portion of the report, the Committee 
indicates briefly the principles which must necessarily be 
observed in framing a plan of organization and government in 
a large city school system. 
5 First. The affairs of the school should not be mixed up 
with partisan contests or municipal business. 

Second. There should be a sharp distinction between legis- 
lative functions and executive duties. 

Third. Legislative functions should be clearly fixed by 

lo statute and be exercised by a comparatively small board, 
each member of which is representative of the whole city. 
This board, within statutory limitations, should determine the 
policy of the system, levy taxes, and control the expenditures. 
It should make no appointments. Every act should be by a 

15 recorded resolution. It seems preferable that this board be 
created by appointment rather than election, and that it be 
constituted of two branches acting against each other. 

Fourth. Administration should be separated into two great 
independent departments, one of which manages the business 

20 interests and the other of which supervises the instruction. 
Each of these should be wholly directed by a single ofificial 
who is vested with ample authority and charged with full 
responsibility for sound administration. 

Fifth. The chief executive officer on the business side 

25 should be charged with the care of all property and with the 
duty of keeping it in suitable condition: he should provide all 
necessary furnishings and appliances : he should make all agree- 
ments and see that they are properly performed : he should 
appoint all assistants, janitors, and workmen. In a word, he 

30 should do all that the law contemplates and all that the board 
authorizes, concerning the business affairs of the school system, 
and when anything goes wrong he should answer for it. He 
may be appointed by the board, but we think it preferable 
that he be chosen in the same way the members of the board 

35 are chosen, and be given a veto upon the acts of the board. 
Sixth. The chief executive officer of the department of 
instruction should be given a long term and may be appointed 



1895] Committee of fiftee7i iii 

by the board. If the board is constituted of two branches, he 
should be nominated by the business executive and confirmed 
by the legislative branch. Once appointed, he should be 
independent. He should appoint all authorized assistants and 
teachers from an eligible list to be constituted as provided by 5 
law. He should assign to duties and discontinue services for 
cause, at his discretion. He should determine all matters 
relating to instruction. He should be charged with the 
responsibility of developing a professional and enthusiastic 
teaching force and of making all the teaching scientific and 10 
forceful. He must perfect the organization of his department 
and make and carry out plans to accomplish this. If he can- 
not do this in a reasonable time he should be superseded by 
one who can. 

The government of a vast city school system comes to have 15 
an autonomy which is largely its own and almost independent 
of direction or restraint. The volume of business which this 
government transacts is represented only by millions of dol- 
lars: it calls not only for the highest sagacity and the ripest 
experience, but also for much special information relating to 20 
school property and school affairs. Even more important 
than this is the fact that this government controls and deter- 
mines the educational policy of the city and carries on the 
instruction of tens or hundreds of thousands of children. This 
instruction is of little value, and perhaps vicious, unless it is 25 
professional and scientific. This government is representative. 
All citizens are compelled to support it, and all have large 
interests which it is bound to promote. Every parent has 
rights which it is the duty of this school government to pro- 
tect and enforce. When government exacts our support of 30 
public education, when it comes into our homes and takes our 
children into its custody and instructs them according to its 
will, we acquire a right which is as exalted as any right of 
property, or of person, or of conscience, can be ; and that is the 
right to know that the environment is healthful, that the man- 35 
agement is kindly and ennobling, and that the instruction is 
rational and scientific. It is needless to say to what extent 



112 Editcational Review [March 

these interests are impeded or blocked, or how commonly 
these rights of citizenship and of parentage are denied or 
defied, or how helpless the individual is who seeks their 
enforcement under the system of school government which 

5 has heretofore obtained in some of the great cities of the 
country. This is not surprising. It is only the logical result 
of the rapid growth of cities, of a marvelous advance in knowl- 
edge of what is needed in the schools, of the antagonism, of 
selfish interests by which all public administration and particu- 

lolarly school administration is encompassed, and of the lack of 
plan and system, the confusion of powers, the. absence of indi- 
vidual responsibility, in the government of a system of schools. 
By the census of 1890 there are seven cities in the United 
States, each with a population greater than any one of sixteen 

£5 States. The aggregate population of twelve cities exceeds the 
aggregate population of twenty States. Government for edu- 
cation certainly requires as strong and responsible an organiza- 
tion as government for any other purpose. These great centers 
of population, with their vast and complex educational prob- 

2olems, have passed the stage when government by the time-" 
honored commission will sufifice. No popular government 
ever determined the policy and administered the affairs of such 
large bodies of people successfully, ever transacted such a vast 
volume of business satisfactorily, ever promoted high and benefi- 

25 cent ends, ever afforded protection to the rights of each indi- 
vidual of the great multitude, unless in its plan of organization 
there was an organic separation of executive, legislative, and 
judicial functions and powers. All the circumstances of the 
case, and the uniform experience of the world, forbid our expect- 

3oing any substantial solution of the problem we are considering 
until it is well settled in the sentiments of the people that the 
school systems of the greatest cities are only a part of the school 
systems of the States of which these cities form a part, and are 
subject to the legislative authority thereof: until there is a 

35 plan of school government in each city which differentiates 
executive acts from legislative functions; which emancipates 
the legislative branch of that government from the influence of 



1895] Committee of fifteen 113 

pelf-seekers; which fixes upon individuals the responsibility 
for executive acts, either performed or omitted ; which gives 
to the intelligence of the community the power to influence 
legislation and exact perfect and complete execution ; which 
affords to every citizen whose interests are ignored, or whose 5 
rights are invaded, a place for complaint and redress ; and 
which puts the business interests upon a business footing, the 
teaching upon an expert basis, and gives to the instruction 
that protection and encouragement which is vital to the 
development of all professional and scientific work. 10 

We have undertaken to indicate the general principles 
which we think should be observed in setting up the frame- 
work of government of a large city school system. While we 
have no thought that any precise form of organization which 
could be suggested, would, in all details, be imperative, we are 15 
confident that the form or plan of organization is of supreme 
consequence, and that any which disregards the principles we 
have pointed out will work to disadvantage or lead to disaster. 

Andrew S. Draper, 
President of the Illinois State University, Champaign, 111. 

W. B. Powell, 
Superintendent of Schools, Washington, D. C. 

A. B. Poland, 
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Trenton, N. J. 



I find myself in general accord with the doctrines of the 
report. There is only one feature of it from which I feel 20 
obliged to dissent, and that is an important though not neces- 
sarily a vital one. I refer to the office of school director. I 
see no need of such an officer elected by the people, and I do 
see the danger of his becoming a part of the political organi- 
zation for the dispensation of patronage. 25 

All power and authority in school affairs should reside ulti- 
mately in the board of education, consisting of not more than 
eight persons appointed by the mayor of the city, to hold 
office four years, two members retiring annually and eligible 
for reappointment once and no more. This board should 30 



1 1 4 Educational Review 

appoint as its chief officer a superintendent of instruction, 
whose tenure should be during good behavior and efficiency, 
and whose powers and duties should be to a large extent 
defined by statute law, and not wholly or chiefly by the regu- 

Slations of the board of education. The superintendent of 
instruction should have a seat and voice but not a vote in the 
board of education. The board of education should also 
appoint a business agent, and define his powers and duties in 
relation to all matters of buildings, repairs, and supplies, sub- 

lostantially asset forth in the report in relation to the school 
director. 

All teachers should be appointed and annually reappointed 
or recommended by the superintendent of instruction, until 
after a sufficient probation they are appointed on a tenure 

15 during good behavior and efficiency. 

All matters relating to courses of study, text-books, and 
examinations should be left to the superintendent and his 
assistants, constituting a body of professional experts who 
should be regarded as alone competent to deal with such 

20 matters, and should be held accountable therefor to the 

board of education only in a general way, and not in particular 

details. 

Edwin P. Seaver, 

Superintendent of Schools, Boston, Mass. 



I concur in the recommendations of the Sub-committee on the 
Organization of City School Systems as summarized in the con- 

25 eluding portion of the report, omitting in item Third, the words 
" And that it be constituted of two branches acting against 
each other." Omit Fifth, " But we think it preferable that he 
be chosen in the same way that members of the board are chosen 
and be given veto power upon the acts of the board." I 

30 recommend that the veto power be given to the president of 

the Board. 

Albert G. Lane, 

Superintendent of Schools, Chicago, 111. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



019 823 540 4 { 



/ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 823 540 ' 



